Arthur M. Blank, the US business magnate and multi-sport team owner, has reportedly been awarded the rights to an expansion franchise in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), which will be located in Atlanta, Georgia.
As reported by The Athletic, Atlanta will become the 17th franchise in the league, and, though not confirmed, will likely enter the competition ahead of the 2027 or 2028 campaigns.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
The team will be operated by Blank’s AMB Sports + Entertainment investment vehicle, through which the billionaire also owns the Atlanta United Major League Soccer franchise, the Atlanta Falcons National Football League side, and operates the 71,000-capacity Mercedes-Benz stadium in which both teams play.
Blank has reportedly paid a record expansion fee of $165 million, the latest signifier of growing commercial interest in the women's soccer competition.
At the beginning of 2025, the Denver Summit franchise, the most recent NWSL expansion team (which will debut in 2026), paid a reported $110 million expansion fee for its own entry.
Since then, the league has bolstered its domestic media rights mix, expanding its rights agreements with sports broadcaster ESPN and national network CBS Sports, while adding streaming service Victory+ as a new partner back in September.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataThe league’s primary set of four-year domestic rights agreements is set to expire at the end of the 2028 campaign, and it is likely that a renegotiation – with a significant rights fee uplift – will be negotiated ahead of the Atlanta franchise’s 2028 entry, a factor that has likely influenced the expansion fee paid.
Blank, of course, is no stranger to soccer investment.
Beyond his ownership of Atlanta United, the businessman has also invested tens of millions of dollars of funding into the US soccer landscape as a whole.
This includes $50 million towards the Georgia-based under-construction US Soccer National Training Center (which is known as the Arthur M. Blank US Soccer National Training Center), and then sponsoring the facility through Home Depot, the major US DIY retail chain that he owns.
Home Depot is also a partner of the upcoming World Cup, and as such, that deal is complemented by the partnership for the biggest host country’s representatives.
