The goals for Canada’s first-ever women’s professional soccer league were lofty: hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, stadiums packed with fans. The success of the Northern Super League’s first season proved those goals aren’t impossible to achieve, and its second season, which kicked off on Friday, is set to prove the league’s organizers know how.
To say the realization of the NSL is a dream come true is fair, president Christina Litz told The IX Sports by phone this week. Over one million people watched last year’s Final between the Vancouver Rise FC and the AFC Toronto, and more than 275,000 tickets were sold over the course of the season.
Former Canadian national team player Diana Matheson was close to retirement when she began to push for a league. At the time, of the 32 countries playing in the World Cup, only Canada and Haiti were without their own pro leagues at home, and Matheson knew she could change that.
Like a lot of Canadian soccer players, Matheson spent time playing in the NCAA in the US at the collegiate level and then internationally for Team Strømmen in Oslo, Norway. But Matheson, like so many others, was “ready to come home,” Litz said.
“She was seeing what was happening around the world, the investments [that] were happening,” Litz said, a reference to the surge in popularity of women’s sports. “And she basically came back to Canada, found out nobody who should be working on [a league] was working on it, and got kind of the excuses that you often heard a few years ago, from ‘Nobody watches women’s sports,’ to, ‘We’ll get to this in a few years.’ She is one of the most impressive women I’ve ever met and so decided to go do it herself.”
Matheson earned her MBA and then participated in a program with UEFA (the European league) to “really study and focus on the feasibility of women’s pro soccer in Canada,” Litz said. “She found a business partner, launched Project 8 (the organization that paved the way for the NSL), and that was the precursor company to the NSL.”
Greg Kerfoot stepped in as owner of the Vancouver White Caps nearly immediately. Kerfoot, Litz said, “had been a real supporter of the women’s national team program, and came in and bought that first franchise, which then led to all the markets that we kicked off last year.” More importantly, she said, “This league was built by players, with players of mind, with a really strong soccer nation for women behind it at a time that — finally — women’s sports is getting its due.”
Building legacy takes time and resources
Being a new league means building a legacy from the ground up, and in 2026, that means doing it front of the world in a way that previous pioneers in women’s sports didn’t have to. Anyone with smartphone can follow a team on social media, which add an extra layer of real-time scrutiny to the process.
“You know, really, that’s just modern sports,” Litz said with a laugh before she acknowledged the stakes the NSL was up against. “On one hand, it was extremely challenging. We were entering a market while everything was going up, but the owners that we had around the table — that we do have around the table — are very ambitious.”
The group wants to do things the right way. “We want to be one of the top five women’s leagues in the world for professional soccer,” Litz said. “And the data is showing we have every reason to believe that we can be like the U.S. — a country that embraces women’s sports.”
The league was among the top three in the world in terms of attendance last year. Litz said that “goes to show how it’s a little bit different in this country, in terms of how we embrace women’s sports.”
The NSL has also been buoyed by supported from the league’s partners, including Coca-Cola, Toyota, and BMO Canada. The league also has commitments from ESPN+ that Litz described as “significant,” and this season 40 of the league’s games will be shown on ESPN. “It’s been, for a long time, telling for Canada to not have this pro league,” she added. “Everything has come together. It seems like it sounds easy, which it was not. It’s truly a startup, but a lot of puzzle pieces were in place that led to the success of the first season.”
The WNBA and NWSL are big influences
Signing players to the league is one of those pieces, but supporting them adequately is another. As WNBA fans saw this year when the league signed a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the players, women who play professional sports are able to advocate for themselves in ways that weren’t possible years ago.
The NSL doesn’t have a CBA, Litz explained, but the rights and benefits that have been collectively bargained by other leagues have been adopted by the the league. “We have center player agreements and player rights and benefits that were bargained for, whether it be WNBA or NWSL. They’re built into our standard player agreement from the get go.”
This includes “extensive, extensive health benefits,” she continued. “We have fertility treatment. We have progressive maternity leave policies. You know, we really wanted this to be — and knowing what a competitive environment it is for players internationally — we really wanted to be setting a high bar for that.”
If there’s one area the league has targeted in terms of growth, it’s building nation-wide infrastructure for more soccer. “We’re very inspired by what we see the NWSL and their ownership group doing in terms of building purpose-built women’s stadiums,” Litz added. “And Canada in general needs more mid-size stadiums.”
The men’s World Cup this summer provides an opportunity for the government to step up. “So we’re looking to this time with the men’s World Cup being here and our own government’s commitment to make sports more of a central priority for us,” she continued. “That’s one of the big projects that [we’re] at constantly is putting in place both the investment needed as well as the private public partnerships that come with these kind of infrastructure.”
The goal? “Projects to ensure that we’re also putting in best-in-class facilities that, of course, is going to take a little bit longer,” she concluded. “But we’re confident we’re going to get there.”
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