Why investment matters: The growth of NWSL training facilities

On June 10 2026, Gotham FC announced the construction of the first ever dedicated training facility in club history, with $35 million of private funding going towards renovating the former Red Bull New York training facility into a 27,000-square-foot environment centered on high performance, recovery, and athlete well-being. 

Construction on the site is expected to be completed in summer 2027, a mere nine years after the club faced severe complaints from former and current players in 2018 because of terrible training facilities and playing and living conditions. With this announcement, Gotham FC joins nine other NWSL clubs in announcing or opening their own dedicated training facility. Just how big of a step is this for the league?

The beginnings

When the NWSL began play in 2013, none of the eight inaugural teams had their own training facilities. Conditions got as bad as those at Sky Blue FC (now Gotham FC), where the training facilities lacked locker rooms, running water, and bathrooms. The club didn’t have an equipment manager or laundry services and were missing basic professional football staples like ultrasound equipment, stim machines, and leg recovery systems. This was generally the worst that it got in the NWSL but it was still a very poor reflection of a professional football league looking to establish itself as one of the best in the world. 

It wasn’t until 2020, seven years since the league first kicked off, that a team started training at its own dedicated training facility when the Orlando Pride started training at their customized, exclusive renovated facility at Sylvan Lake Park. The landmark center featured a gym, a meal room, a film room, a players’ lounge, and a locker room, along with two club-maintained grass training fields. This move gave the Pride the same facilities, resources, and amenities that were available to their associated men’s side, Orlando City SC. The first NWSL club unaffiliated with a men’s side to own their training facility was the Kansas City Current, whose dedicated training facility didn’t open until June 2022, nearly a decade after the very first NWSL season. 

Although it took far too long for the players to have access to proper training conditions across the board, the future is very bright.

The present and the future

As mentioned before, the Kansas City Current opened the league’s first dedicated training facility in 2022. Their 17,000+ square foot complex features dedicated fields, a gym, a hydrotherapy room, a physical therapist’s office, a kitchen and lounge area with a performance-oriented chef, and a film review room. Since it first opened, this has quickly become a standard across the league. The most recently announced training facility, that of Gotham FC, are planning to have similar amenities available to their players when the grounds open next summer. Today, every NWSL club provides players access to essential medical and physical recovery services, locker rooms, showers and bathrooms, training pitches, and gyms. This is a far cry from the way the league initially started, and most if not all teams are going above and beyond these basic necessities for a professional football team. 

One of the league’s newest teams, the Denver Summit, who are playing their very first season in the NWSL, just announced that its new training facility officially welcomed its players and staff for the first time on Wednesday, June 17, around four months since they began play. The club’s players will have access to three full size football pitches, state-of-the-art recovery technology, a gym, a treatment area, massage rooms, hydrotherapy, cryotherapy, a sauna, a private player room, and a dedicated nutrition bar just four months after joining a brand new team. This kind of investment would be unthinkable to the trailblazers who played in the NWSL’s first ever season. How special is it that it’s the standard for women’s professional footballers today?