​When Whitney Haslam Johnson thinks about Columbus’ first National Women’s Soccer League game at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field in 2028, the governor of the league’s newest franchise envisions a stadium filled with fans, facilities that reflect a commitment to providing the best for female athletes and a squad featuring homegrown talent, U.S. women’s national team players and some of Europe’s top stars.“All of the above,” Haslam Johnson, who is also a Haslam Sports Group (HSG) managing partner, tells The Athletic a few days before breaking ground on the team’s 45,000 square-foot training facility. “We are going to make sure that we build a squad that we can win trophies.”HSG, which also owns MLS’ Columbus Crew and NFL’s Cleveland Browns, paid a $205 million expansion fee to bring an NWSL franchise to Columbus, one of the largest investments made for entry into a women’s professional sports league. The fee was nearly double Denver Summit’s $110 million fee in 2025 and $40 million more than what Arthur Blank paid for Atlanta City FC only a few months before Columbus. The average franchise is valued at $184 million per Sportico’s latest valuations.However, Haslam Johnson says their investment is about more than securing a place in one of the fastest-growing segments of professional sports. It is an opportunity to apply the infrastructure, commercial relationships and experience of an established sports ownership group to a women’s soccer club built with its own identity.The timing was deliberate.“We’re always evaluating opportunities around the ecosystem of sports,” Haslem Johnson says. “We’ve been in touch with the NWSL over the past several years, learning about the league, learning about the priorities, and I think the more we learned, the more excited we got.”Seeing Denver’s sold-out opener at Empower Field at Mile High with over 60,000 seats and Gotham FC’s Queens Classic at Citi Field, only added to her excitement about the league’s potential. “When we see that, we are just blown away,” she says.But Columbus is not starting from scratch. Since acquiring the Crew in 2019, the Haslams have invested in a downtown stadium, rebuilt the club’s staff and helped establish it as one of MLS’ more successful franchises, with two MLS Cup wins in 2020 and 2023.“After the Haslams bought the team and put all this investment into it, we felt like we were in a good place as an organization to do it correctly for a second team, for a women’s team,” Mary Shepro, president of business operations for both Columbus teams, says. “We wanted to make sure that when we invested in bringing an NWSL team here, that we could do it the way that we wanted to do it, which is at the highest level.”One of Columbus’ biggest advantages over other expansion teams is that it won’t need to build a soccer-specific stadium. The club will play at the Crew’s approximately 20,000-seat stadium in downtown Columbus. Earlier