NEW YORK (June 27, 2024) – At the halfway point of its 12th season, the National Women’s Soccer League has much to celebrate as attendance, viewership and engagement metrics continue to soar.

For the third-straight season, league regular season attendance has surpassed one million fans. The feat was achieved during match No. 91 of the league’s 182-game slate this season, marking the fastest NWSL campaign to reach the milestone. To date, overall attendance has increased 42 percent year-over-year.

En route to the million mark, six clubs achieved club attendance records, including the Chicago Red Stars, who set a new NWSL single-match attendance record in Week 11 with 35,038 fans on hand for the club’s historic match against Bay FC at Wrigley Field. The match also surpassed the long-held attendance record for an American women’s professional league contest, set in 2001 by Women’s United Soccer Association (WUSA).

Additional attendance metrics include:

• Ten teams broke or matched home opener records to kick off the 2024 season.
• Overall home opener attendance grew by 18 percent from the 2023 campaign.
• Week 11 marked the first time in league history that a single weekend in NWSL play had a combined attendance of over 100,000.
• Forty-nine matches – half of all games this season – have seen crowds over 10,000 through Week 13. The league is comfortably on track to surpass last year’s mark which saw 55 matches with more than 10,000 fans in the stands.
• Heading into Week 14, average attendance across the league sits at 11,089, the highest average attendance for any women’s professional soccer league in the world.
• Over half of the NWSL’s 12 clubs who competed in the 2023 season are currently at or exceeding their average attendance marks from last year.

With half of the season complete, the NWSL has seen explosive growth in viewership as the league’s matches continue to captivate a growing number of fans. Through Week 13, more than 7 million viewers have tuned into contests across the league’s Nielsen-rated national broadcast platforms, up 95 percent from the 2023 season.

Notable matches to air on broadcast platforms this season include the 2024 regular season home opener that saw 584,000 fans tune in to ABC to watch a rematch of the 2022 NWSL Championship between the top-of-the-table Kansas City Current and Portland Thorns FC.

In Week 11, CBS averaged 546,300 viewers for the league’s East-West battle between NJ/NY Gotham FC and Angel City FC before registering its second-most watched regular season match on a CBS platform as 553,000 viewers took in the 40th edition of the Cascadia Rivalry between Seattle Reign FC and Portland Thorns FC on CBS in Week 12.

Through Week 13, the first-ever weekly NWSL pre-match studio show on ION has amassed 4.6M viewers. The 30-minute program highlights the outstanding stories of NWSL players while giving viewers expert analysis of ION's Saturday Night Doubleheaders.

As engagement on league social platforms continues to increase, NWSL social impressions have risen 94 percent, while retail performance on NWSLShop.com has jumped nearly 300 percent, thanks in large part to the NWSL’s first-ever league-wide kit redesign with Nike.

About NWSL
The National Women’s Soccer League is the premier women’s professional soccer league in the world featuring national team players from around the globe. The clubs are Angel City FC, Bay FC, Boston, Chicago Red Stars, Houston Dash, Kansas City Current, NJ/NY Gotham FC, North Carolina Courage, Orlando Pride, Portland Thorns FC, Racing Louisville FC, San Diego Wave FC, Seattle Reign FC, Utah Royals FC, and Washington Spirit.