-
Jeff Kassouf
Multiple Authors
DENVER, Colo. — The line to purchase merchandise on the west side of the main concourse stretched hundreds of people deep as kickoff loomed on Saturday at Empower Field at Mile High. The crowd that had spilled inside from morning tailgating was clad not in Denver Broncos blue and orange, but the distinct forest green of the city’s new NWSL team, Denver Summit FC.
Prominent among the 63,004 fans in attendance was Lindsey Heaps’ No. 10 jersey on fans’ backs in anticipation of the USWNT captain’s summer arrival. For at least one day, Denver’s new NWSL team set the national benchmark for club soccer, setting a league attendance record and a standalone women’s soccer game attendance record in the United States.
As the fighter jets flew overhead and the smoke from the on-field pyrotechnics permeated through the glass of the press box and luxury suites in the minutes before kickoff, it was as clear as the sunny Colorado skies that the magnitude of what was on display on Saturday was unrecognizable to the NWSL of a few years ago, and unimaginable to even the most staunchly optimistic league supporter. There’s a new bar for ambition in the NWSL, and it keeps getting raised semiannually by the league’s new teams.
“We couldn’t imagine that this could become a reality for the NWSL,” commissioner Jessica Berman said pre-game, high above the field. “I think that’s what expansion teams do for a league; they redefine what’s possible and challenge all of us who are either incumbent teams or who have been around for a few seasons to raise the bar. And that’s what this team has done in the NWSL.”
– USWNT Transfer Grades: Assessing, rating all the major moves
– UWCL Talking Points: How can VAR, refs improve?
– Predicting the USWNT’s 2027 Women’s World Cup starting lineup
An estimated half a million people were expected in downtown Denver on Saturday for events that ran the gamut from several pro sporting games to March Madness viewing parties, a “No Kings” political protest and several Disney on Ice shows, but the city’s new, unproven NWSL team still staked its claim as a must-see event. Defender Kaliegh Kurtz said in the buildup to Saturday’s match that she can’t wear her team gear around town without getting stopped by fans. Previously, with the North Carolina Courage, she would walk around anonymously even in team gear, she said.
There was a fan festival downtown on Thursday night that further hyped what the team dubbed “The Kickoff.” The Summit painted a full city block with signage in the team’s green. Downtown coffee shops offered Summit-themed beverages, and billboards promoting the game dotted the traffic-laden freeways that circle the metro area.
“When we first came into this league, it was nothing close to this,” Smith, who has played for seven NWSL teams over 10 years, said after the match. “Some of us veterans had this moment where we were emotional because the growth of this league has been drastic and the support that Colorado has come out and just gotten behind us is wild.”
In terms of Saturday’s spectacle, the game lacked a big, defining moment. The 0-0 draw featured a few half-chances for teams, including a second-half shot by Summit forward Natasha Flint that some of the crowd thought was a goal. In the end, tired legs prevailed among two teams each playing their third game in a week.
Arguably as important as Saturday’s fanfare are the indistinguishable plots of land to the south of Mile High that will define not only the long-term future of the Denver Summit franchise, but the rising expectations of Berman & Co. back in the New York City league offices.
On those plots, Denver Summit will build a 14,500-seat stadium at Santa Fe Yards, which is a few miles south in a transitional neighborhood on the edge of an arts district. It will be accessible by an existing light rail stop.
Farther south, through the interstate traffic and into the proper suburbs, lies the team’s training complex and temporary stadium in Centennial, Colo. Summit FC plans to move into the 12,000-seat temporary venue later this year, slightly behind the original schedule. Some of the grass for fields has been laid next to that performance center, and a few steel beams are visible, rising out of the acres of dirt wedged between office parks, apartments and a government building.
A Denver Summit spokesperson said the team’s total investment in infrastructure will be nearly $350 million, on top of the $110 million expansion fee paid by the team to enter the league. All of that advancement has taken place since the team was formally announced by the NWSL in January 2025.
“Trying to do what we’ve done in 15 months is almost impossible for a team to do, to be honest,” Denver Summit controlling owner Rob Cohen said ahead of the match. “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, we’ve already played a few games — we’re 1-1-1, we’re competitive in the league, we’re playing in front of 60,000 fans — is a little hard to even comprehend.”
That sentiment is shared among many. Not because there was a lack of belief in the appetite for women’s professional soccer, and not because there aren’t umpteen untapped markets to which the growing 16-team (soon to be 18-team) league can expand. It’s because the level of ambition and investment has increased exponentially.
Five years ago, the expansion fee was a mere $2 million and franchise valuations were only slightly higher. Many teams were — and still are, which is an ongoing growing pain for the league — secondary or tertiary tenants in their home venues. They also lacked their own training facilities for day-to-day work.
Of course, Saturday’s crowd of 63,004 fans will not be the weekly norm in the NWSL. That figure is balanced out by harsher realities in other markets that struggle to crack 5,000 fans per game. It will, however, serve as a new benchmark not just for attendance at future big events, but for what NWSL players, owners, and fans can imagine as possible.
“Portland has a consistency, LA has a consistency,” Summit forward and NWSL veteran Ally Brazier, who grew up locally, told ESPN. “If we had our stadium, we could probably have that consistently right now. So, I think it’s just projecting what our future is, going into a temporary stadium and to our actual stadium in 2028, is going to show we’re going to be that kind of crowd. We’re going to be like an LA or a Portland.
“It’s going to be a lot of fans, and it’s going to be that kind of an atmosphere that people are excited to play in.”
