What makes the NWSL the highest-attended women’s football league in the world?

On March 28th 2026, the Denver Summit played in the Mile High City for the first time ever in front of a record-breaking 63,004 fans, making it the largest stand-alone women’s soccer game in US history. A little under 13 years earlier, the NWSL’s first ever game brought together 6,784 fans to watch FC Kansas City take on the Portland Thorns. Today, despite being one of the only leagues with independent clubs that cannot build on the success of male counterparts, the NWSL boasts the highest average attendance of any top-division women’s football league in the world. This feat wasn’t achieved overnight, however. How did the league get to this point?

The origins: Portland Thorns

In the first three seasons of the league, at a time when the rest of the league was averaging around 3,000 fans per game, the Portland Thorns saw a number closer to 14,000. This massive success came from a variety of factors. The team was founded in a city with an already strong football culture, both on the men’s side with the Portland Timbers and on the women’s side with the Portland Pilots women’s college soccer team that won two national championships and produced players like Christine Sinclair and Megan Rapinoe. The Thorns also got to take advantage of the football culture built by the fans of MLS side Portland Timbers. Portland’s stadium is located centrally in downtown Portland with excellent public transportation access, making it easier for fans to commute to and from games. Finally, the Thorns started off with a very strong supporters group that helped bring more fans to the club.

The Portland Thorns’ strong fan culture continues to persist today, as the club now regularly draws crowds upwards of 18,000 and continues to break its own records year after year.

Since those first few seasons in the early 2010s, NWSL attendance has skyrocketed from an average of 4,270 fans overall in 2013 to league averages well above 10,000 in the past few seasons. What does the attendance look like today?

The present: Coastal dominance

The NWSL started off with eight teams in 2013 and through expansion has doubled that with 16 different clubs playing in the league today. Expansion has also led to a huge boom in attendance league-wide.

In 2022, California got its first ever league representation as Angel City FC and San Diego Wave FC joined the NWSL. Angel City was immediately able to harness its large market, drawing an average of 19,105 fans per home game. A year later, the Wave caught up, with around 20,000 fans making it to each match. In 2023, mean attendance for the league went up from 7,894 in 2022 to 10,432, marking the first time the figure breached the 10,000 mark. 

Two new teams joined the league in 2024: Bay FC based in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Utah Royals, based out of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area. The same year, the Kansas City Current started playing at CPKC stadium, the world’s first stadium purpose-built for a professional women’s sports team. The Current sold out every home game that season and the following one, with every one of the arena’s 11,500 seats occupied. Bay FC started their NWSL legacy off strong with an average of 13,617 tickets sold per game, near where the Portland Thorns started off in 2013, and the Utah Royals’ average also crossed the 10,000 mark that season.

Another team that has seen a big boom in attendance is the Washington Spirit, who moved to the centrally located Audi Field at the start of the 2023 season. Average attendance immediately jumped from 5,955 to 10,876 that year, and in 2025 the Spirit played in front of an average of 15,259 fans, earning the stadium the nickname “Rowdy Audi.”

Finally, the league expanded once again in 2026, with the Boston Legacy and the Denver Summit joining the competition. Both teams broke records for home opener attendance, with Boston drawing 30,207 fans to watch their first match on March 14 and Denver playing in front of an enormous crowd of 63,004 people two weeks later. 

The future: More work to be done

Although the league has seen an immense amount of growth since the first kick-off in 2013, there is still a lot of work to be done. Eight out of 14 teams still averaged below 10,000 fans per home game in 2025, and even this season some teams are drawing crowds as low as 1,821. 

Attendance needs to grow across the board in order to ensure that all teams are creating a strong home game environment and that the game is continuing to grow. In the past, factors that have contributed to high attendance have been centrally located stadiums that are easy to access, strong marketing campaigns to draw in new fans, and strong existing fan cultures.

Some teams are taking steps in the right direction—there have been reports that Gotham FC is looking to move from a less accessible New Jersey stadium to a more centrally located one in Queens, New York City. Other teams are facing barriers outside of their control, as the Chicago Stars have a lot of uncertainty about where their permanent home will be. Either way, there are teams playing in front of crowds that are much smaller than they deserve, and the clubs need to do better to get them up to par with the Portland Thorns and the San Diego Waves of the world.