NWSL Ambition Rankings: Which teams are raising standards, and which aren't trying enough?

Welcome to Year 3 of ESPN's NWSL Ambition Rankings, the semi-scientific way to determine which franchises are pushing boundaries, and which are just trying to keep up.

NWSL franchise valuations continue to rise to record highs, and the balance of ownership groups across the league keeps shifting in favor of those with more money and bigger ambitions. But some teams continue to step up more than others.

Two new teams, Boston Legacy FC and Denver Summit FC, will play their first games in a few days, and their debuts on the ranking adds some shake-ups. Atlanta, which will begin playing in 2028, is sure to challenge for the top spot before even playing a game.

For this ranking to be useful in an ever-growing league (16 teams and counting), we have simplified our process. Criteria remain the same, with key factors being the willingness of franchise owners to invest in their teams on and off the field.

We're asking: Is the team pushing the limits of the salary cap (and the new, fluid High Impact Player rule) to build a contender? Has team ownership spent money on a training facility or stadium improvements? Quite simply, are their stated goals ambitious (win a championship, be the best team in the world) or do they have a low ceiling?

One important reminder: Ambition is not the same as execution. There are teams that have lofty aspirations, but have failed to successfully realize them. There are teams with more modest ambitions who overperform. We have absolutely deducted points for poor execution, but the willingness to aim high -- even if it means falling short -- outweighs not trying at all.

The idea is inspired by the late Grant Wahl, who annually did a similar ranking for MLS. Measuring ambition, especially for a league as young as the 14-year-old NWSL, is a worthwhile endeavor. Let's get to it!

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16. Chicago Stars FC (Last year: 13)

While the Stars' ranking dipped this year, there is finally progress in Chicagoland.

The team's move to Martin Stadium is a temporary, but necessary, step to move on from the abyss of Bridgeview. The Stars had to do something, and they did. They also recently announced plans to build a dedicated training facility, which will be relatively small but, again, was one of many pain points for this team.

Where do they play beyond 2026? That still needs to be resolved, which is hardly ideal.

On the field, they finished last for the second time in three years. And yet, their biggest offseason move was selling forward Ludmila to San Diego. Mallory Swanson's return from maternity leave can't come soon enough.

15. Houston Dash (Last year: 14)

The Dash remains for sale after one of the most bizarre stories in a decently long list of them failed to produce a new owner. Until there is a new, motivated owner with a clearly stated direction for the team, it's impossible to fully understand the ambitions of the Dash.

The good news: There is progress on the soccer front. Houston was inconsistent last year as another rebuild got underway, but the Dash have talent and more direction than before. Houston has also built out a robust technical staff -- including the recent addition of Twila Kilgore as technical director -- that is larger than most of its peers in this section of the rankings, which requires investment.

14. Racing Louisville FC (Last year: T-10)

Louisville's facilities are great and plenty of teams would love to have them. Of course, those facilities are more expensive to build in bigger markets, and the rub on having a nice stadium is that there need to be butts in the seats. Louisville finished last in average attendance in 2025 and recorded its worst attendance in its five-year history. That is ominous.

Those struggles stand in stark contrast to what happened on the field. Bev Yanez won NWSL Coach of the Year for galvanizing a gritty team and earning Racing's first playoff berth. Louisville was a difficult opponent for every team last season and could build upon that success this year -- even while being outspent by other teams.

13. North Carolina Courage (Last year: T-10)

A reported $40 million investment from team owner and billionaire Marc Lasry, per Sportico, could be a sign of this team moving forward and making long-term, much needed investments.

Attendance improved to over 7,600 fans per game in 2025, the team's best since it arrived in the market in 2017. First Horizon Stadium still needs major modernization, but improved attendance is a good sign for a team that struggled to gain a local foothold even during its successful years. Long-term, the Courage still need to either gut the stadium or finally build one inside Raleigh limits.

On the field, the team regressed and missed the playoffs in a chaotic season that included the confusingly messaged firing of head coach Sean Nahas and the abrupt re-sale of USWNT star Jaedyn Shaw (who ended the year by winning a title with Gotham FC) eight months after acquiring her.

12. Utah Royals (Last year: 12)

We've been begging Utah to splash some more cash on the field to compete, so the $800,000 transfer fee to get Kiana Palacios from Club América is a welcomed sign. Now, what does this team want to be? For two straight years, the Royals have endured miserable starts to the campaign before salvaging results and playing the role of spoiler late in the season.

The Royals have their own training ground, and they play at the (too empty, too often) America First Field, which is from a previous wave of MLS stadium projects. The facilities are there, and there are new owners since we last did our ambition rankings. This year will be telling of their ambitions.

11. Seattle Reign FC (Last year: 9)

This is the point in the rankings where there's nothing inherently wrong with what a team is doing; our task is to compare them to the rest of the NWSL.

The Reign's joint ownership with the Sounders allows for bigger thinking and better staffing, including more support staff than ever around head coach Laura Harvey. On the field, the Reign made major improvements in 2025, finishing fifth and conceding the third-fewest goals (an Achilles heel in 2024).

But nobody has yet solved the riddle in Seattle: Why do the Reign still struggle to crack the local market the way the Sounders have? Reign attendance dropped last year, and 8,000 fans is always an aesthetic struggle in a cavernous NFL stadium. It's time to take bigger swings.

10. Orlando Pride (Last year: 5)

Average attendance in Orlando improved for the third straight year following the team's 2024 NWSL Shield and Championship double, although the Pride are still fighting for better crowds and local relevance in a tough media market.

Orlando already has the soccer-specific stadium that it shares with its men's team, and they will soon upgrade their training facility. What's next? Their encore on the field in 2025 was respectable -- a whisker away from making it back to the final. Haley Carter has moved on from her VP/sporting director role, and Caitlin Carducci is tasked with pushing the team forward.

Elimination in the group stage of Concacaf play was a failure, though a healthy Barbra Banda should help them return to championship contention again. And to the Pride's credit, the $1.5 million transfer fee to acquire Jacquie Ovalle last summer was a world record at the time.

9. Boston Legacy FC (Last year: N/A)

Here we have a perfect example of the dichotomy between ambition and execution. It would be a disservice to sugarcoat the early years (!) of Boston's launch. The club wasted that historic lead time on a name, BosNation, that was almost immediately ridiculed and scrapped, anchored by a disastrous "Too Many Balls" campaign.

A much-hyped stadium renovation is going to clock in a year behind schedule, leaving the team splitting time between Foxborough and Rhode Island this inaugural season. The stadium issue was nearly an existential crisis at one point, but that angst is the product of a club trying to innovate, and in a historically difficult city politically, to boot.

• Watch Gotham vs. Boston this Saturday, live on ABC

I, among others, still have reservations about the White Stadium setup -- Boston Public Schools will use the field about 90% of the time -- but the end product should hopefully leave Boston with one of the most unique venues in the country. Done right, it could be a modern relic of the old days. Add that to the performance center being built, and they are still taking bigger swings than many.

In the on-field department, Boston has adopted a unique, international approach to roster construction, including with its technical staff. Are they ahead of the curve of shifting NWSL trends?

8. Portland Thorns FC (Last year: T-3)

The Thorns returned to their historical position as league leaders in attendance in 2025 -- thanks in part to Angel City's steep decline -- and they are still a focal point of Portland soccer culture. That is a testament to the fans, who have endured some trying times, with the previous ownership accused of enabling abuse of players, which prompted the Thorns' sale to the part-owners of the Sacramento Kings.

A new training center, which will be shared with WNBA expansion team Portland Fire in a first such crossover for the leagues, will open later this year. The Thorns are long overdue for a daily home for that isn't the turf at Providence Park.

While Portland finished third in 2025 and lost in the semifinals, the past year has felt incongruous with the team that set global standards when it launched in 2013. The head-coaching search dragged on far too long and will affect them this season. The recent departures of midfield stars Hina Sugita and Sam Coffey were huge losses that have not been filled -- not to mention, Sophia Wilson's contract option only keeps her in Portland through December.

7. San Diego Wave FC (Last year: T-7)

The Wave bounced back from a miserable low in 2024 to return to the playoffs in 2025. The offseason departures of Kailen Sheridan and Delphine Cascarino, each under odd circumstances, raised eyebrows.

But the Wave remain ambitious and aggressive on the transfer market. They spent $800,000 to acquire Brazilian forward Ludmila from Chicago, and they might be the new home of USWNT forward Catarina Macario come summer.

On the flip side, San Diego's attendance dropped by 26% year over year, the sharpest decline in the NWSL. Alex Morgan's retirement only explains some of that. Has the novelty worn off in San Diego? Or did the year of controversies finally catch up with the Wave?

This year is another fork in the road. A more permanent training ground also remains elusive.

6. Bay FC (Last year: 6)

On the field, some of the expansion shine has worn off at Bay FC. New head coach Emma Coates is tasked with revitalizing a team that finished tied for the fewest points in the league last season. Too often, Bay just wasn't competitive.

Away from the field, Bay is due to open a training facility on Treasure Island in the next year, a tangible indication of how the team clearly sees San Francisco as its pathway to bigger and better things. Despite its wretched record, Bay FC set an NWSL attendance record at Oracle Park last year with 40,091 fans at the baseball park.

Bay FC owners Sixth Street also continue to add to the wider technical staff of what will become a multi-club organization, although Bay is still the only club in it.

5. Denver Summit FC (Last year: N/A)

How does a team yet to kick a ball land fifth in the ambition rankings?

For starters, Denver's first home game on March 28 has already sold enough tickets to smash the NWSL attendance record, a sign that this booming sports market is thirsty for its first women's professional team.

Now, let's talk about infrastructure: Majority owner Rob Cohen & Co. plan to open a new, 14,500-seat stadium inside Denver city limits in 2028. That will be just the second stadium in league history built specifically for an NWSL team. In the meantime, they are also constructing a 12,000-seat temporary stadium -- delayed by tariffs and shipping from China, bizarrely, which is a minor setback.

So, out of the gate, Denver is set to have the second-best facilities in the entire league once all that is completed. On the field, they've already followed through on bringing Colorado players home, including a statement signing of U.S. women's national team captain Lindsey Heaps.

This is a new standard in NWSL expansion that is untethered to an existing men's team.

4. Gotham FC (Last year: T-7)

Gotham has now won two NWSL Championships in three years, won the first Concacaf title, and represented the NWSL at FIFA's first global women's club competition. They've splashed cash on players, paying an intraleague record $1.25 million for Jaedyn Shaw in September. They have not shied away from other spending to improve their team, like preseason trips to Spain.

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Marcotti: Gotham's Champions Cup failure a big missed opportunity for the NWSL

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Cracking the greater New York City market is tough, but average attendance nearly reached 9,000 in 2025, the best in the team's long history (which includes sub-2,000 averages in its early NWSL years). They even got a tickertape parade to City Hall in November after their latest title. They are also expected to imminently have a solution for a more permanent training facility.

Gotham is one of the NWSL club's that has talked about a desire to be the best in the world, and they are walking the walk.

3. Angel City FC (Last year: 2)

The most valuable team in the NWSL is still doing business at a scale exponentially greater than many of its competitors. Nothing new to see there. Angel City is still the innovator and disruptor of the NWSL with aspirations to set new standards for women's sports teams.

But the game is played on the field, and failing too often there has consequences -- especially in LA. Attendance dropped by about 16% last year, and while a multitude of factors contributed, ongoing underachievement is one of them.

The abrupt departure of hometown star forward Alyssa Thompson in September forced Angel City to rewrite their rebuild strategy yet again. Los Angeles loves winners, and Angel City has lost far too often. It's imperative that the plan starts to come together this year.

2. Washington Spirit (Last year: T-3)

Washington made it to the NWSL Championship for the second straight season in 2025 (losing again in the final) after relatively comfortably finishing second (also for the second straight year). Then the Spirit poached Haley Carter, architect of the Orlando Pride's 2024 double-winning season, to become their new president of soccer operations.

Soon after, the long Trinity Rodman contract saga ended with Rodman staying with the Spirit in a deal that sources confirmed to ESPN is worth over $2 million annually with bonuses, the most lucrative in the world. The Spirit were at the forefront of helping quite literally rewrite the rulebook by pushing the NWSL to create the High Impact Player rule, which allowed the Spirit to fend off other offers for Rodman.

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Trinity Rodman: I want to help grow soccer in the U.S.

Trinity Rodman explains why she signed a contract extension with the Washington Spirit.

Audi Field has also become one of the premier atmospheres in the league. The Spirit's average attendance jumped to over 15,000 fans per game, third in the NWSL and another healthy, four-digit increase year-over-year. The Spirit are nationally relevant and increasingly part of the fabric of Washington, D.C. sports.

1. Kansas City Current (Last year: 1)

Parity? Not in our ambition rankings, which Kansas City tops for the third year in a row.

The Current had already built their own stadium (to anchor an entire city district revival) and training facilities, and in the past year they have opened a second of each of those so that their reserve team has its own home. Their main training facility will also be used by the Netherlands during this year's Men's World Cup.

Majority co-owners Angie and Chris Long have also launched a multi-club arm by purchasing Danish team HB Køge. The Longs have said explicitly that they want the Current to win the forthcoming Club World Cup (they need to qualify, first).

On the field, the Current put together the most dominant NWSL Shield-winning season in history, winning the league by 21 points in 2025 thanks to a roster that kept getting stronger in the summer. But they fell short again in the playoffs, and the offseason hiring of Chris Armas leaves major questions and pressure on the field. Still, they are playing chess while most of the league plays checkers.