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Venues are an evergreen problem that won’t soon go away for the national-womens-soccer-league/”>national Women’s soccer League.
The NWSL released its 2025 schedule this week, just over six weeks before the Challenge Cup match that will commence the new season. The schedule is complicated by the fact that only one of the league’s 14 teams outright owns its stadium and is the primary or sole tenant.
That same issue is front and center in this question: Where will the 2025 NWSL championship be played? It will remain a predetermined site, like the NFL’s Super Bowl, but the potential answer is not any easier today than it was a year ago. An announcement of the host is likely several months away.
Let’s take a look at the realistic options – and usual challenges – as the league tries to figure out where everyone will convene for the big game on Nov. 22.
Go it again
That one stadium where the NWSL team is the owner and primary tenant? It’s in Kansas City, where the NWSL just held its championship a mere two months ago.
Going back to the same venue in cold weather again, which holds only 11,500 people, might not sound so appealing on the surface, but there’s some logic to it.
Logistically, it’s challenging for league staff to swoop in and take over a stadium for a week. They just did that at CPKC Stadium in November, so they’ll be familiar with everything that went well – and everything that didn’t.
A return to Kansas City would likely also mean another sellout crowd and the chance to push the narrative that owning stadiums matters. Would it annoy other team owners? Absolutely, and that might be the point if you’re Commissioner Jessica Berman. Want to host this showcase event? Get those stadium projects over the line.
The NWSL likes to compare itself to the NFL in some (highly ambitious) ways. The NFL has used the Super Bowl as leverage with teams and local politicians to get stadium deals sorted out, so there’s an existing playbook for what seems like madness.
Go big
Rewind to 2023, and the league was more than happy to boast about a championship-record crowd of 25,011 fans at an American football stadium in San Diego. League brass will likely be eager to return to that growth narrative, and industry sources have indicated a desire to hold this year’s final in a bigger venue (Kansas City is the second smallest in the league).
Given the scheduling complications that home-market teams face for their own games, the overlapping MLS playoffs in November, and the NWSL’s need to secure the host stadium for most of the week before the game, otherwise ‘obvious’ places are nearly impossible logistically. BMO Stadium in LA comes to mind as a no-brainer place to hold the final that might not ever work logistically.
Fear not, Angelenos: A little creative thinking and a heap of ambition from the league could go a long way. And this American football-sized option feels like it could be the best of both worlds for the NWSL.
LA, as one example, is home to numerous stadiums, including the historic Rose Bowl — site of the famous 1999 world Cup final — and the relatively new and high-tech SoFi Stadium. The rental bill would be steep and the task tall to fill such large venues, but it would also serve as a statement of intent from the league.
Expanding the search to American football stadiums opens a world of possibilities beyond LA, though, and it helps that these venues typically book events well in advance. NFL and college football schedules are set well in advance of any MLS playoff scenario uncertainties.
Move up the California coast, and Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara (capacity 68,000) makes a lot of sense from a market perspective, with similar challenges about size and cost. It’s also a generally reliable market for weather in November.
The same could be said for plenty of southern markets with big stadiums, but the Bay and LA also check the box of proven support in their market.
Go back to the well
Kansas City is not the only NWSL venue that could possibly host the game, to be clear, but it offers the fewest uncertainties.
There are other prior NWSL championship host stadiums potentially worth revisiting, with Portland probably atop that list given the long-established fan support and the size of the venue. Portland last hosted the final in 2018.
Houston and Orlando have also previously hosted NWSL Championships. Those took place in a different, humbler era of the NWSL, but the crowd turnout was poor in both cases. Houston still isn’t a proven draw even for the Dash. Pride fans began to turn up amid the team’s championship run last year, but Orlando is a historically fickle market for attendance, too.
Back to Audi Field in Washington, D.C.? Maybe, though the final is about a month later on the calendar than when the stadium hosted it in 2022. The support is there, but the Washington Spirit are still secondary tenants to D.C. United (a familiar trend).
First Horizon Stadium in Cary, North Carolina, last hosted the final in 2019. The 10,000-seat stadium is too small for the league’s ambitions, and it lacks the professional amenities needed – from luxury suites to a proper press box – to host the big event.
Go to the future
The NWSL championship may or may not be the right time to test out a potential new market. The answer is likely to be dependent on each individual market.
Boston and Denver are scheduled to enter the league in 2026, so the 2025 final could be a prelude to either’s big launch. Boston, however, faces an uphill battle to even have its proposed stadium playable by March 2026, so that’s out.
Denver could be interesting, but the team’s 2026 venue likely won’t be championship-ready. That leaves the Broncos’ 76,000-seat stadium and the 18,000-seat Dick’s sporting goods Park, which is logical only if the NWSL team were going to utilize it (and that has long sounded unlikely).
The elephant in the room about Denver is the weather. The 2024 USL championship final was played on the same day as the NWSL championship in November. The USL men’s game took place in Colorado Springs (with the home team in action) while dodging one of the snowiest Novembers on record (for Denver, anyway, which is an hour north).
Denver poses a higher risk of November snow than some other markets, which could be a travel headache for fans and teams alike – not to mention the game itself in a precious primetime window.
Maybe that opens the door to something new entirely. Miami in November sounds nice, doesn’t it? There’s an inherent risk to market testing for the league’s one true showcase event, however, and a flop would be a bad look for the league and the market.
Last year’s Liga MX x NWSL Summer Cup final might not be a totally fair barometer for such an idea, but it’s the only parallel the league has to date. The game in San Antonio was a total bust.
This might be the least likely option.
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