© USA TODAY Sports

The NWSL is set to expand by three teams starting with the 2024 season. Per reports, Boston, Utah and the San Francisco Bay Area are the next three cities set to received NWSL franchises. Utah and San Francisco are likely to join for the 2024 season while the Boston team will join for a later season. The three expansion teams come on the heals of the Angel City FC and San Diego Wave FC teams which begin play in the 2022 season.

Per reports, the Utah franchise will pay somewhere between $2 million and $5 million, similar to what Angel City FC and San Diego Wave FC paid, because there was already an agreement in place years ago. Utah originally had a franchise called the Utah Royals FC from 2018 to 2020 when the team folded and moved to Kansas City which is now known as the Kansas City Current.

The Boston and Bay Area franchises will reportedly each pay around $50 million in expansion fees, which is a significant increase over what Angel City FC and San Diego Wave FC paid, and it sounds like there were multiple investor groups in on the bids for an expansion team.

Top