The record
The NWSL is the first American women's professional soccer league to survive. This is its complete history — every season, every club including the ones that no longer exist, and the analytical record from 2016 onward.
2020 is greyed: the regular season was cancelled and the league returned in a closed tournament. Attendance has roughly tripled since 2016, and the single-match record now stands at 63,004.
Before
Two professional leagues rose and folded before this one.
WUSA launched in 2001 with eight clubs and burned through its funding in three seasons. WPS followed in 2009 and lasted three more. When the NWSL was founded in 2013 it was built deliberately differently: the United States, Canadian and Mexican federations paid the salaries of their allocated internationals, so no single owner carried the wage bill alone. That subsidy is the reason this league outlived its predecessors.
Survival
Eight clubs, federation-paid stars, and crowds in the low thousands.
The early league ran on allocation: national-team players were assigned to clubs rather than signed. Portland took the first championship, then FC Kansas City won back-to-back titles in 2014 and 2015 — a club that would not survive the decade. No advanced data exists for these seasons; what follows here is the documentary record.
Documentary record. No advanced data exists for these seasons — tables and narrative only.
Growth and fragility
The analytical record begins — and so does the churn.
From 2016 every pass, shot and duel enters the record, so this is where the measurable history of the league starts. The Western New York Flash won the 2016 title and were sold within months, reborn in North Carolina as a side that won the next two. The Boston Breakers, a founding club, folded weeks before the 2018 season. Growth and collapse ran side by side.
Shock
A cancelled season, then a reckoning.
COVID wiped out the 2020 regular season; the league returned in a bubble tournament and became the first American professional league to play again. In 2021 players came forward with accounts of abuse and coercion across multiple clubs. The commissioner resigned, coaches were removed, and an independent investigation led by Sally Yates followed. The 2021 season is a matter of record here; what happened around it is not something to reduce to numbers.
The revolution
Players won the leverage, and the money arrived.
The first collective bargaining agreement landed in 2022 with free agency and minimum standards. A four-year media deal worth $240m — the largest in women's sport — took effect in 2024. Then the 2024 CBA went further than any American league had: guaranteed contracts, unrestricted free agency, and the abolition of the college draft. Clubs lost the ordered list they had recruited from for a decade.
The open era
Sixteen clubs, a hard cap, and an open market.
Every incoming player is now a free agent, and every club is bounded by the same cap — rising from $3.3m in 2025 toward $5.1m by 2030, with a $1m High Impact Player allowance sitting above it from 2026. Talent identification became the competitive lever, which is the reason this site exists.
| Season | Champion | Record |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Portland Thorns FC | documentary |
| 2014 | FC Kansas City | documentary |
| 2015 | FC Kansas City | documentary |
| 2016 | Western New York Flash | analytical |
| 2017 | Portland Thorns FC | analytical |
| 2018 | North Carolina Courage | analytical |
| 2019 | North Carolina Courage | analytical |
| 2020 | — | analytical |
| 2021 | Washington Spirit | analytical |
| 2022 | Portland Thorns FC | analytical |
| 2023 | NJ/NY Gotham FC | analytical |
| 2024 | Orlando Pride | analytical |
| 2025 | NJ/NY Gotham FC | analytical |
| 2026 | — | in progress |