Per a 2025 Forbes report, only one of the top five busiest highways is located outside of California: Interstate 75 in Atlanta, Ga.
It’s the north/south corridor that runs from Canada to Florida, but in Atlanta, specifically, it’s the connector for main attractions within the city.
That’s why when Mercedes-Benz Stadium was selected as one of the hosts – including for the semi-finals – of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the question of “how would this work” became a topic of conversation among the residents of the city.
It turns out, it more than worked out – it thrived.
Thrived.
It’s a word that shouldn’t just be used with the business elements of soccer in the city of Atlanta, but the actual teams, as well.
That’s why when Atlanta was awarded an NWSL expansion team in 2028, there was no question of “how would this work?”
No, it was more of a sentiment of “this makes too much sense not to work.”
“Atlanta has shown that they can support, and the fans will come out and support women’s sports franchises, whether they be at the collegiate level, the semi-professional level, or the professional level,” Josh Blank, vice president of executive strategy for Arthur M. Blank Sports and Entertainment (AMBSE), told The IX Sports.
“I would say for us as an organization, we always believed that when the time came, we would be able to pull it off, and we know Atlanta well and believe in Atlanta and the state of Georgia. We know that ultimately they’ll come out and support their teams.”
Blank, the son of Arthur M. Blank, who owns the Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta United, and the yet-to-be-named NWSL franchise, played a crucial part in bringing professional soccer to Atlanta in 2018 with the United.
It was a dream of his to have a soccer team in the city – especially as an avid soccer fan and former player at Elon University.
Blank will be involved with both the United and the NWSL team upon its launch. While the two teams will be separate, United’s success didn’t hurt the case of AMBSE winning the expansion bid with a record $165 expansion fee.
“It certainly helps,” Blank said. “Having the opportunity to launch a team is is incredibly unique, and for us as an organization to have done it already once, and now having the chance to do it twice, I think you can take a lot of the learnings from that first go around of what it was like to launch a team, and in this case, not only launch a team, but launch a team within the same sport. Knowing, though, that there are differences in terms of the athletes, in terms of the league, where the leagues are at, the fans, but you can still take learnings from really growing the business from the ground up.”
One thing that Blank made a point to differentiate throughout the 30-minute conversation with The IX Sports was that the NWSL team and the United, while under the same umbrella and the same sport, are two distinct teams.
The Blanks realize the value of investing in women’s sports – from a societal perspective and also a business perspective – but they realize that the way to do it isn’t to have the NWSL team be an add-on to the United, but its own standalone entity.
Blank referenced the Golden State Valkyries as an example. They play in the same arena as the Golden State Warriors. They have the same owner.
But they are their own team and, more than that, their own brand.
“It is important for us to continue growing soccer in Atlanta and utilizing the NWSL team as part of that. But at the same time, it’ll be great and really important for us for the team to have their own brand, their own identity, as well,” Blank said.
“We don’t want it to be seen as a sister club to Atlanta United. You will see the clubs work together at points. You’ve seen it some around the World Cup where Atlanta United and the NWSL team have activated at fan fests and pubs together, but it’s equally important for the brand to have their own voice within the community and be able to speak to their core audience and fans in a unique way that fits who they are trying to be and engage with.”
Blank referenced the Valkyries, but there’s also a team closer to home who he can use as an example: the Atlanta Dream.
“The Blanks are going to do an amazing job with this team,” Atlanta Dream team president and chief operations officer Morgan Shaw Parker told The IX Sports. “Arthur has said for a long time, ever since I was a part of the Falcons organization, that this is something that he wanted to do. I think the timing just had to be right, and it is so exciting to see Atlanta rally around women’s sports for us.”
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Parker saw firsthand the journey that it can take to rebuild a professional women’s sports team in the right way.
Parker was part of a team that included Renee Montgomery, Suzanne Abair, and Larry Goddessteiner, who took over the Dream in 2021.
Since then, the popularity of the team – and women’s sports in general – has exploded. The talent was always there, but the sports, teams, and athletes started getting more exposure, resulting in record-breaking Collective Bargaining Agreements and TV deals.
Take, for instance, the Dream, who play in the smallest arena in the league at the Gateway Center Arena, which holds around 3,500 fans.
Their valuation, per Sportico, has climbed each of the last three years from $55 million in 2024 to $280 million in 2026.
That jump, while impressive, is last in the league.
“It has definitely been an uphill climb to rebuild our organization, but our fans come out of the woodwork and support us every single game,” Parker told The IX Sports. “And I know Arthur and Josh Blank and the whole organization are going to do an absolutely fantastic job. We’ve seen it done with Atlanta United. I was there when Atlanta United was launched, and I am so excited to have another women’s team, another professional women’s team on board in Atlanta.”
Women’s sports are a booming business, and they are here to stay.
“I think you look at the NWSL in particular; it’s also been on an incredible rise from viewership to attendance to franchise or club valuations and the quality of talent,” Blank said about now being the time for Atlanta to bring in an NWSL team. “I think also you look at NWSL as the No. 1 or No. 2, depending on how you argue, soccer league in the world on the women’s side, and for us to be a part of that is really special. There’s been an incredible rise in popularity, investment, and attention on these athletes who deserve it.”
According to Sportico, the average NWSL team is worth $184 million, up 77% from 18 months ago. The Chicago Stars came in last in valuation at $115 million, but they were still at a 115% increase from 18 months ago when the report ran in March 2026.
It takes an investment like AMBSE made of $165 million to get into the game.
The investment is continuing for AMBSE into the team, as they are constructing an $85 training facility in Marietta, Ga., for the team to use.
“It’s the largest training facility, women’s sports training facility investment in North America, at least on the soccer side, and that signals clearly what our intent is to be: incredibly successful, help continuing to grow the NWSL, help continuing grow women’s soccer, and really professional women’s sports, both here in the United States and globally,” Blank said.
“We want to continue to help put the NWSL on the map, both here in the United States, but also globally. And the training facility will set up our players, our coaches, our technical staff, and really our business staff to have as much success as possible.”
The Blanks had a taste of the crowd that the women’s game can draw when it hosted the semifinals of the She Believes Cup in 2024.
Atlanta featured the United States vs. Japan, and then Canada vs. Brazil in a doubleheader. It set a record for a United States Women’s National Team friendly game with 50,644 fans in attendance.
“I think that was just a great validation point for us in a lot of ways, and to prove to people that women’s soccer will be popular here,” Blank said. “We see it all the way from 5-year-olds playing to 30, 40, 50-year-olds coming out and watching and supporting the teams. We’ll look to and hopefully partner with U.S. Soccer on future events of that nature.”
It’ll be easy to do, as U.S. Soccer moved its national headquarters and training facilities to Atlanta. It truly is the hotbed of soccer suddenly. That momentum will help when the team launches, but make no mistake about it – Blank knows that the team needs to win.
The honeymoon period for expansion teams simply existing and not being competitive is getting shorter and shorter due to teams like Golden State, Angel City FC, and San Diego Wave making an immediate impact upon joining their respective leagues.
It’s not enough to simply exist – you have to compete.
“We definitely set high expectations for ourselves internally in terms of where we want to be from an expansion team,” Blank said. “Certainly, we acknowledge that there are challenges when you are an expansion team with teammates trying to gel together and your people are still getting adjusted to the league if they’re coming over for the first time. But I do think it’s important to start off on a fast foot, as it’s really an opportunity when you’re a new team that you can immediately capitalize on the excitement in the market.”
“It’s important for any organization to build and retain their fan base,” Parker added. “So I do think for expansion teams, it’s interesting because you’ve got a period of time to really endear yourself to a fan base, a lot like what Atlanta United did, and a lot like what the NWSL team is doing. There’s a period of time before you have players on the field or on the court where you really have time to build.
“For us, it was different in 2021. We were, and we’ve been very public about it. This was a franchise that was almost like a startup with a lot of baggage. We had to clean things up. There was an amazing existing fan base, and so what we needed to do was learn from them. We needed to bring in individuals that understood the game, that understood Atlanta, and that really believed, as we did, that we could grow this organization.”
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Blank has done that with the NWSL team. They have brought in Mauricio Culebro as the president of soccer for AMBSE, who was the president of the Liga MX side Tigres UANL, as well as Deandra Duggans, formerly of the Las Vegas Aces, as the club’s vice president and chief business officer and Keith McCloat, formerly of the New York Mets, as vice president and chief financial officer.
And while the team hasn’t revealed what the name will be yet, Blank said that the organization did its market research and once it is unveiled, he knows that the fans will know that their feedback was heard and that it will resonate with the people of Atlanta and Georgia as a whole.
The NWSL season needs to wrap up, and there’s a whole other season in 2027 that will take place before the Atlanta NWSL team officially begins play.
How that will look – including who the coach will be – is still up in the air.
Blank said that they will ideally look for a coach who has experience within the women’s game, but “won’t rule anybody out” as far as a men’s coach they feel can translate well.
Whoever that person will be will dictate the style of play. But what he hopes it is is an exciting brand that will have the fans out in droves.
“I always think that you want to be a part of teams that play an exciting style of play. And for us, we want to create a product on the field that’s exciting for the players to be a part of that helps them grow their brands as much as we possibly can, both on and off the field, whether it be reaching national teams, playing in World Cups or becoming million-dollar endorsement athletes,” Blank explained.
“We want to create and shine spotlights on them. So I think we’ll play an exciting brand of soccer, one that hopefully will be high-scoring and high-octane, and it should be fun for people to come and enjoy.”
