Shortly after Jen Millet was hired as Denver Summit FC's president last summer, franchise owner Rob Cohen paused for what Millet now calls a "defining moment" for the 2026 NWSL expansion team. Cohen wondered: Were they going to be ready, or should they push back the team's launch?
"We kind of looked at each other and said, 'This market is so excited about this club, there is so much momentum, that we can get through this because we have such strong tailwinds,'" Millet told ESPN in the tunnel of Empower Field at Mile High Stadium. A day later, Denver smashed the NWSL's single-game attendance record, with 63,004 fans in the stadium to see the Summit and Washington Spirit battle to a scoreless draw.
Millet, who also helped launch Bay FC as an NWSL expansion team ahead of the 2024 season, said that "the iron was hot" to strike with a 2026 launch. Denver was officially announced as team No. 16 in January 2025.
Meanwhile, fellow 2026 expansion side Boston Legacy FC had the longest lead time of any team in NWSL history: over three years from the time the NWSL's board first conditionally approved their bid to join the league in January 2023. It's been a longer, but bumpier road.
Denver and Boston brought the NWSL to 16 teams this season, doubling the eight that inaugurated the league in 2013. Those expansion teams will play each other for the first time Sunday at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, and their launches -- on and off the field -- couldn't have been more different.
Two NWSL expansion teams: One sprint, one stop-start
While Denver sprinted to get ready for 2026, Boston's three-year runway to its expansion season was truncated by turbulence.
There was the infamous brand launch in late 2024, when the team introduced itself as "BOS Nation FC" with a marketing campaign titled, "Too Many Balls," a reference to men's sports teams. Both were widely ridiculed. The costly marketing campaign was immediately retracted, and the team eventually changed its name after holding focus groups and consulting with fans -- a process that did not happen the first time.
While that was seemingly fixed with a rebrand to Legacy FC, the expansion franchise's stadium problems aren't so simple. The team's proposed home venue has been in the crosshairs of Boston politics, costs keep rising, and more bumps might lie ahead.
The Boston Legacy ownership group entered in a public-private partnership with Boston Public Schools, which will see the city and team share renovation costs for White Stadium, which was in disrepair. It was hailed by the team and NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman as revolutionary, but thus far it has faced stiff resistance from local advocates, including a conservancy that sued, arguing the plan privatizes public parkland. (Boston Legacy's owners won an initial injunction and ruling, though the plaintiffs appealed.)
The budget to renovate the stadium has also ballooned from three years ago, with the estimated taxpayer costs for the project nearly tripling.
White Stadium's renovation was so essential to the NWSL's acceptance of the Boston franchise that failure to begin playing at the venue in 2026 would "risk NWSL terminating its rights," according to previous court documents. White Stadium just began vertical construction in recent weeks and is expected to be ready at some point in 2027. Instead, the Legacy are splitting time this season between Gillette Stadium -- a 65,000-seat NFL stadium -- and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in their inaugural season.
"I think the key, when we think about building infrastructure, is ensuring that there's an alternative, interim solution that can meet the standards of the league," Berman told ESPN in March in her new office in New York City. "Because when you're building purpose-built infrastructure -- particularly things like a stadium as opposed to a training facility -- it is going to be hard. And I think the Boston Legacy, they have navigated a lot of challenges really effectively."
The Legacy's debut on opening weekend drew 30,207 fans to Foxborough, a record for an inaugural home match -- that is, until the Denver Summit doubled that number two weeks later.
"I know that at this point, standing here today, today is a win," said Legacy control owner Jennifer Epstein, whose family previously held ownership in the Boston Celtics, before that match.
"Today, I'm just thinking about today and the celebration," Epstein said when asked about the team's three years leading up to the game. "We're doing something big; we're doing something historic. And yes, it's been hard -- harder than one might have thought -- but I couldn't be more proud of the effort of the whole organization. Today, I feel pride and honestly a sense of awe that we got here. We're playing in a world-class stadium."
Later this year, Boston will open a dedicated training facility south of the city, which is now a requirement for all NWSL expansion teams.
Denver has faced similar startup challenges on expedited timelines, but with clearer solutions. The Summit have a new purpose-built home stadium locked in to be ready by 2028, and unlike in Boston, it appears there's no additional red tape to get through.
Jeff Kassouf reports on Denver breaking the league's single-game attendance record in its inaugural home game Saturday.
Like Boston, the Summit are also juggling multiple temporary homes in their inaugural season. A near-capacity (announced sellout) crowd of 16,932 fans showed up for Saturday's thriller against San Diego in the team's second home match and first at Dick's Sporting Goods Park, the home of MLS' Colorado Rapids.
Denver will play there one more time before moving into its temporary, modular stadium in Centennial, a 15-mile drive south of downtown (with a heavy dose of traffic). That 12,000-seat temporary venue was delayed by shipping and tariffs, as it was built in China before being disassembled and shipped to Colorado for reassembly. Vertical construction on the stadium just began in late March adjacent to the team's long-term training center and fields.
Denver will keep training in that location, which sits across from the current Denver Broncos' practice facility and amid a stretch of industrial buildings and apartments. The Summit will eventually sell back parts of the stadium to the company that designed it and leave a 4,000-seat venue that will become home to Cherry Creek School District athletics.
The team plans to open its permanent stadium in 2028 at a long dormant plot of land south of Denver's edgy, downtown arts district. The stadium, which Berman called "the holy grail," will be expandable with a base of 14,500 seats, and it will be the second in league history -- and one of the few in the world -- built specifically for a women's team.
"Trying to do what we've done in 15 months is almost impossible for a team to do, to be honest," Cohen said ahead of Denver's home opener. "I tell people: 15 months ago, we didn't have a single staff member, we didn't have designs on our performance center, we didn't have a single player, we didn't have a coaching staff. To be at this point 15 months later ... is a little hard to even comprehend."
Different rosters, different results thus far
Moments after Boston lost 2-0 to the Chicago Stars in a bottom-of-the-table matchup Saturday, Denver opened a surprising 2-0 halftime lead against the league-leading San Diego Wave FC.
San Diego stormed back to win 3-2 in an early contender for the NWSL game of the season. The loss was a painful lesson for the Summit, but it also provided a glimpse into how competitive they can be even as an expansion team.
Denver built a roster largely reliant upon proven NWSL talent, from rejuvenated goalkeeper Abby Smith and defender Kaleigh Kurtz to captain Janine Sonis. Lindsey Heaps, the captain of the U.S. women's national team and the NWSL's 2018 MVP, will arrive in the summer from French powerhouse OL Lyonnes.
The Summit also recruited well. German forward Melissa Kössler, who came from under-the-radar TSG Hoffenheim, has four goals already this season and is one of the league's breakout players. Denver is led by head coach Nick Cushing, who previously won trophies with Manchester City women before a stint coaching in MLS.
Sammy Smith gets on the board for Boston Legacy FC.
Denver has been defensively solid but understandably inconsistent. The Summit held the Washington Spirit, runners-up the past two seasons, to a scoreless draw in that historic March match at Mile High three days after defeating defending champions Gotham FC. The signs are there that Denver can compete, Cushing said after the draw with the Spirit.
Boston, which constructed its roster almost entirely of internationals or players with limited NWSL experience, has endured a far more humbling welcome to the league.
Saturday's loss to lowly Chicago was the Legacy's fifth in five games to that point. Boston scored only once in those first five games. Per ESPN Global Research, the Legacy took 27 shots against Chicago and produced 2.74 expected goals -- more than the previous four games combined -- but still couldn't find the back of the net.
Filipa Patão, who joined Boston as head coach after success in Portugal with Benfica, has deployed more adventurous variations of a 3-5-2 formation. There have been fleeting bright spots, including forward Aissata Traoré and NWSL veteran winger Nichele Prince, but the Legacy have struggled to find a cohesive rhythm and often looked slow in moments of transition -- one of the defining characteristics of the NWSL.
Boston finally picked up its first point Wednesday in a 2-2 draw with the North Carolina Courage. The Legacy's two goals in that game marked progress, although blowing a 2-0 lead after 13 minutes dampened what would have been a more jovial mood.
Expansion seasons are notoriously difficult in any league, and Boston and Denver are the first to navigate the process without a college or expansion draft. They each took vastly different approaches to their roster construction, and while Denver's early results (six points) don't have the Summit in playoff position, they have found more early success.
Can Boston and Denver build sustained success?
What each team does next will matter far more than the handful of games either has played thus far or, ultimately, any early launch mishaps.
The NWSL is expanding at a rapid pace and admitting ownership groups that have shown an ambition to push the league to new limits. Those are the types of promises which Boston and Denver -- and, come 2028, Atlanta and Columbus -- must deliver. Relatively respectable crowds of around 10,000 fans have turned up for weekend home games at Foxborough, but they have been swallowed up by the vastness of an NFL stadium. At White Stadium, which is inside the Boston city limits, those crowds would nearly fill the place.
Jeff Kassouf reports on Columbus landing the NWSL's 18th franchise with a record $205M expansion fee, and will join alongside Atlanta by 2028.
A Boston Legacy spokesperson told ESPN that the Legacy surpassed 4,000 season-ticket memberships in early April.
The Legacy face the task of trying to write a new chapter in a city with women's soccer history. The Boston Breakers played in two previous professional leagues and the NWSL. The Breakers folded in January 2018, less than a month before the NWSL preseason was supposed to start, due to years of financial strain and an inability to secure new ownership.
Denver, meanwhile, is getting its first taste of women's professional sports at this level -- and the response has been strong. The team had to stop selling season-ticket memberships at 8,200 to allow for single-game sales at the temporary venue and, eventually, the team's permanent home. Millet told ESPN that there is an additional waiting list of 7,500 people for season tickets as of late March.
The sample size on the field for both teams is still too small to make any sweeping conclusions, and there is a long way to go off the field. Boston's early missteps could fade with time -- "BOS Nation" will never be forgotten, but the Legacy brand was well-received. Finally opening White Stadium and proving that sharing the facility with Boston Public Schools' many sports programs can work would help the Legacy put some of the growing pains behind them.
Denver, meanwhile, has quickly established itself within the city's sports culture. There is tangible awareness of the team around the city, from their downtown offices to billboards along the highways and green "Heaps 10" jerseys on the streets. Still, the team must continue earning the trust of its local community. San Diego's roller-coaster from 2022 expansion success to regression on and off the field (and maybe back again) offers a cautionary tale.
Some hard lessons have already been learned.
Berman said that the Legacy and the NWSL learned from the BOS Nation's branding fiasco. The NWSL now has an employee -- Emma Schilling, who previously worked with many expansion bidders at Sportsology -- who is a "centralized point of contact for every expansion team" to help them build out their sporting and business operations, and build their literal infrastructure.
"Certainly, when we admitted [Boston and Denver], obviously at different points in time, we knew they were signing up for something that was super ambitious," Berman said. "It has proved to be super ambitious. I am proud of them and us for setting the goalposts at something that is aggressive but achievable. It is aggressive but achievable.
"What we are going to accomplish is going to change the face of those communities and those cities for generations to come, and I'm really proud of that."
