At the southwest corner of ScottsMiracle-Gro Field in Columbus, Ohio, stood a long line of people. It was not a security line to enter, just for the chance to get an autograph or buy some of the locally sourced food options in the stadium. No, it was to get a button.
Those people were not necessarily fans of Gotham FC or the Kansas City Current, who were there for the Challenge Cup. No, they were the first batch of NWSL Columbus supporters, as far as the club is concerned. Each received a black button with “Founders Club” printed alongside a black and yellow version of the NWSL logo.
For $28, those fans not only bought a piece of flair but also put down a symbolic deposit on a season ticket, plus members-only special events. Friday, that meant a prematch meet and greet with NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman and a spot on the soggy and soaked sideline to watch Gotham lift the trophy after a convincing 2-0 victory.
That Friday night matchup was the first in-person NWSL match for some and the NWSL could relate. In the sixth edition of the Challenge Cup, the league broke precedent when it chose a city without an NWSL team to host the annual championship matchup.
When the league announced the Ohio capital as the host site on January 15, Columbus’ connection to top-flight women’s soccer went as far as the United States women’s national team.
In the 2003 World Cup, the USWNT beat North Korea in front of 23,101 fans, which included the second World Cup goal for legendary striker Abby Wambach. In 2024, the United States edged out Canada 2-2, winning on penalty kicks 5-4, which included an early penalty kick conversion that went right into a save for goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher. Both of those, plus 11 other matches for the USWNT and multiple 2-0 World Cup qualifying wins over Mexico on the men’s side of the game, helped Columbus earn the “spiritual home of US Soccer” moniker.
Despite all that history, professional women’s soccer at the highest club level eluded the town until Gotham FC and Kansas City Current took the field on a rainy Friday night. That match was not only a new trophy in Gotham’s cabinet of well-earned hardware, but it showed a city that looks prepared for the National Women’s Soccer League, according to the players themselves.
Gotham FC defender and USWNT mainstay Emily Sonnett did not mince words when asked if she thought Columbus was ready for the NWSL. “Yeah, I do. Period,” Sonnett told reporters.
It might be easy to discount those words from an NWSL player as simply holding the company line, but the proof showed Friday night. On Thursday, the common joke from employees of the Haslam Sports Group involved hoping or praying away the incoming day of storms in Columbus. Even so, before Friday, the number floated around for attendance sat around 14,000 — at least that’s what Ohio-born USWNT star midfielder Rose Lavelle heard and shared with the media.
The last time Columbus held a women’s soccer match of this magnitude was on March 4, 2026. That is when a Lavelle assist to forward Ally Sentnor gave the US a 1-0 win over Canada in the SheBelieves Cup. In that matchup, attendance hit 18,545, which is nearly a sellout. In 2023, when MLS club Columbus Crew won the MLS Cup in the then-named lower.com Field, standing room brought the number of attendees to 20,802. Friday night’s Challenge Cup brought in 11,369 for a friendly match with two teams who each play multiple states away from Ohio. That eclipsed the 10,669 NWSL average attendance in the 2025 season.
While that figure was lower than either SheBelieves Cup matchups held in the downtown stadium, those came in rivalry matchups that included the USWNT, a side that has no problem drawing a crowd.
Even though names like Lavelle, Sonnett and defender Tierna Davidson all donned the stars and stripes and Gotham black, two NWSL teams in a non-NWSL city does not drum up the same national pride or obligation. NWSL supporters’ group Cloud Nine, out of the New York/New Jersey area, brought banners and had a contingent of fans, but the crowd leaned more towards a family environment. Young kids and their guardians flooded the video board before the match. Even though this meant there were no audible supporter songs throughout the five-year old stadium, and future home of NWSL Columbus, at times there were walls of sound pushing towards the field.
“I have to say, kind of reminds me of ours back home,” Kansas City defender Izzy Rodriguez told reporters. “I like seeing all the fans out here. The crowd is great. It was loud, I couldn’t hear sometimes, so that’s awesome.”
Rodriguez, who played collegiate soccer for the Ohio State Buckeyes, compared the environment to a Kansas City stadium that sold out every match of both the 2024 and 2025 seasons. Friday night’s Columbus crowd could nearly fill the Current’s CPKC Stadium alongside the Missouri River.
Columbus has a recent history of supporting their professional soccer club. In MLS, the Crew averaged 20,431 for the 16 matches played in Columbus, which does not include the over 60,000 who watched Columbus face Inter Miami at the Haslam’s NFL football stadium in Cleveland, Ohio. Each of the last three seasons ended with an average of at least 20,000 per match in attendance at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field.
There is nearly two years of work to do for the Haslam-owned front office, including decisions on how the MLS and NWSL sides coexist. However, Friday night showed that there is at least some crossover support from Crew supporters. Friday night, many wore Columbus Crew jerseys or shirts in the crowd, and proudly wore their Founding Member buttons. To arguably the most popular player on the field, the drenched stadium of supporters felt like a USWNT crowd, despite being down 7,000 people from a Columbus SheBelieves match.
“Both games, the crowd is really into it,” Lavelle told reporters. “You can feel the momentum when in the big moments, and yeah, I think it was pretty comparable.”
A lot can change in two years time. On one hand, there is the expected excitement that surrounds nearly all expansion teams. This is especially true in Ohio, where women’s pro sports are a hot topic with the WNBA welcoming back a Cleveland franchise in 2028, too. On the other hand, NWSL Columbus and the Haslam Sports Group created a public debate when the accepted bid included parkland earmarked for a neighborhood of Columbus rated as the poorest neighborhood per capita in the state of Ohio. That land will house the club’s training facility.
It will be a couple of years before there are new attendance numbers to crunch and connections made to the local controversy, but if Friday is any indication, the excitement around the new team has real momentum.
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