Not long ago, women’s franchises were given away in sales of men’s teams. Today, there are 25 clubs valued at nine figures, collectively worth $5.6 billion.
After three decades of existence, the WNBA finds itself in a precarious position as team owners and the players’ union battle over a new collective bargaining agreement. Coming off two seasons that set attendance and TV ratings records, athletes want a larger share of the league’s growing revenue, among other demands. Owners, naturally, want to keep costs down as the league heads into its 30th season with a rosier business outlook than it has ever had.
If the two sides can come to an agreement and preserve the momentum, they will have a long line of investors hoping to pour money into the league.
That enthusiasm helps explain why, despite the threat of a work stoppage, the WNBA is boxing out other women’s sports. On Forbes’ inaugural list of the world’s most valuable women’s teams, the top five all come from the league—led by the $400 million New York Liberty—with all 12 WNBA franchises valued by Forbes ranking among the top 25.
The rest of the 2025 list features eight National Women’s Soccer League franchises, as well as five European soccer clubs: three from England’s Women’s Super League and two from Spain’s Liga F. All 25 ranked franchises are worth nine figures, with an average of $224 million and the NWSL’s Seattle Reign FC setting the cutoff at $105 million, according to Forbes estimates.
Combined, the 25 teams are valued at $5.6 billion—a far cry from a few years ago, when women’s franchises were sometimes thrown in as freebies in sales of men’s teams under the same ownership. Before Michele Kang took control of the Washington Spirit in 2022 at a $35 million valuation, for example, NWSL clubs traded for less than $5 million. Now, the Spirit rank 20th among women’s sports teams at an estimated $130 million. The WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, meanwhile, have seen an even more dramatic rise, going from a $2 million price tag in their 2021 purchase by billionaire Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis to a $310 million valuation today, No. 4 among women’s teams.
In those intervening years, the NWSL has added blue-chip sponsors including AT&T and Google, and the Kansas City Current have demonstrated the game-changing possibilities of a team-owned stadium, projecting $45 million in 2025 revenue and expecting to break even on an operating basis. The league also signed new national broadcast agreements in 2023 for $240 million over four years, a package that is set to get a boost next season with the expansion of the ESPN and CBS Sports deals and a new partnership with streaming service Victory+.
The WNBA is one step ahead with its media rights, signing agreements in 2024 that will reportedly pay out $2.2 billion over 11 years, and several teams have already flirted with profitability. Forbes did not value the Golden State Valkyries this year as they took the court for their debut season, but the team was projecting at least $55 million in revenue solely from sponsorships and ticket sales—nearly $20 million more than any women’s sports team had ever generated total in a year. And while Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark missed most of this season with injuries, the whole league has benefited from the so-called Caitlin Clark Effect, including Clark herself, now one of the world’s highest-paid female athletes.
The upward trajectory has lured some financial heavy hitters into ownership groups, including billionaires Lauren Leichtman and Gail Miller and investment firms such as Carlyle and Sixth Street in the NWSL. Expansion fees also continue to skyrocket—to $165 million for an NWSL franchise in Atlanta last month and $250 million for Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia in the WNBA in June.
At the same time, investors are beginning to look across the Atlantic. Most notably, Chelsea, of the Women’s Super League, sold a 10% stake in May to Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian at a valuation of roughly $250 million, which puts the club at No. 10 among the most valuable women’s teams.
The Ohanian deal aroused skepticism around the sports world, particularly because the price was at 17.4 times the team’s publicly reported revenue of around $14.5 million for the previous season. Even by the standards of fast-growing women’s leagues, that number would be an outlier—by comparison, Forbes valued NWSL teams this year at an average of 8.8 times trailing-season revenue, and the average multiple in the WNBA was a sky-high 14.4x. However, one insider tells Forbes that the Chelsea women’s team’s revenue, separated from the men’s club of the same name, was actually closer to $25 million for the 2023-24 season, which would drop the multiple in the sale to a much more reasonable 10x.
The situation highlights the murky finances of European women’s teams, which often exist under the much larger umbrella of men’s clubs and which, with a couple of notable exceptions such as Arsenal and Barcelona, have received little investment in their facilities or operations. In fact, amid concerns that men’s Premier League teams were starting to treat their sister clubs like piggy banks—selling off stakes to give themselves a financial lift and circumvent player payroll restrictions tied to their revenue—the sport tweaked its rules last month.
For investors, European teams have other drawbacks relative to their American counterparts: a stagnating market for media rights, second-rate stadiums, more restrictive ownership rules, a promotion-relegation system that can wipe out revenue for teams that are demoted, and a less commercialized sporting culture, where virtually any level of ticket price increase prompts fan outrage. Those issues align with the challenges that have depressed team values on the men’s side, but there is one key difference: In women’s soccer, the U.S. is home to the world’s best talent.
That disparity isn’t guaranteed to last, however. Some American stars, including Naomi Girma and Alyssa Thompson, have moved overseas in recent years, and Spirit forward Trinity Rodman is currently being wooed by European teams that aren’t bound by a salary cap, with the NWSL reportedly scrambling to introduce a new roster mechanism that would allow the league to hold on to her. If the balance of talent continues to shift to Europe, it would be a big score for a continent that is crazy about soccer but currently features a few haves and many more have-nots.
Already, the top clubs in Europe have tremendous brand value, with names and logos that are recognized around the globe thanks to decades of success by their associated men’s teams. For that reason, some soccer insiders believe that the women’s clubs at Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich might sell for $100 million if they were to hit the market, even though none of those teams have done much to justify that kind of price, with Deloitte listing their 2023-24 revenue at roughly $8 million, $5 million and $4 million.
“Women’s European football is like seed or pre-seed-type investments, whereas the NWSL for the most part is Series A, Series B, even Series C-type rounds,” one insider says. “What that means is those investors are bringing in a framework of venture capital, like how to think about pre-revenue or early-stage-revenue companies versus true revenue multiples.”
Then again, the team prices in the NWSL and the WNBA aren’t necessarily firmly grounded in current economics, either. At a time when the U.S. has more billionaires than ever, and with sports franchises having developed into a true asset class, the bids are much more a function of scarcity value—and a bet on a bright future.
THE MOST VALUABLE WOMEN’S SPORTS TEAMS 2025
#1. $400 million
New York Liberty
League: WNBA | Owners: Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai | Revenue: $25 million
#2. $370 million
Indiana Fever
League: WNBA | Owner: Herb Simon | Revenue: $32 million
#3. $330 million
Seattle Storm
League: WNBA | Owners: Lisa Brummel, Ginny Gilder, Dawn Trudeau | Revenue: $21 million
#4. $310 million
Las Vegas Aces
League: WNBA | Owner: Mark Davis | Revenue: $22 million
#5. $300 million
Phoenix Mercury
League: WNBA | Owner: Mat Ishbia | Revenue: $25 million
#6. $280 million
Angel City FC
League: NWSL | Owners: Willow Bay and Bob Iger | Revenue: $35 million
#7. $275 million
Kansas City Current
League: NWSL | Owners: Angie and Chris Long | Revenue: $36 million
#8. $260 million
Arsenal
League: Women’s Super League | Owner: Stanley Kroenke | Revenue: $19 million
#9. $255 million
Barcelona
League: Liga F | Owners: club members | Revenue: $19 million
#10 (tie). $250 million
Chelsea
League: Women’s Super League | Owners: Todd Boehly, Clearlake Capital | Revenue: $25 million
#10 (tie). $250 million
Dallas Wings
League: WNBA | Owner: Bill Cameron | Revenue: $15 million
#12. $240 million
Chicago Sky
League: WNBA | Owner: Michael Alter | Revenue: $16 million
#13. $235 million
Los Angeles Sparks
League: WNBA | Owner: Eric Holoman | Revenue: $16 million
#14. $230 million
Minnesota Lynx
League: WNBA | Owners: Glen Taylor, Marc Lore, Alex Rodriguez | Revenue: $16 million
#15. $205 million
Washington Mystics
League: WNBA | Owner: Ted Leonsis | Revenue: $13 million
#16. $200 million
Connecticut Sun
League: WNBA | Owner: Mohegan Tribe | Revenue: $14 million
#17. $190 million
Atlanta Dream
League: WNBA | Owners: Larry Gottesdiener, Suzanne Abair, Renee Montgomery | Revenue: $11 million
#18. $170 million
Bay FC
League: NWSL | Owner: Sixth Street | Revenue: $21 million
#19. $165 million
San Diego Wave FC
League: NWSL | Owner: Lauren Leichtman | Revenue: $24 million
#20. $130 million
Washington Spirit
League: NWSL | Owner: Michele Kang | Revenue: $15 million
#21. $120 million
Portland Thorns FC
League: NWSL | Owners: Lisa Bhathal Merage and Alex Bhathal | Revenue: $17 million
#22. $115 million
Manchester United
League: Women’s Super League | Owners: Glazer family, Jim Ratcliffe | Revenue: $12 million
#23 (tie). $110 million
NJ/NY Gotham FC
League: NWSL | Owner: Carolyn Tisch Blodgett | Revenue: $9 million
#23 (tie). $110 million
Real Madrid
League: Liga F | Owners: club members | Revenue: $11 million
#25. $105 million
Seattle Reign FC
League: NWSL | Owners: Carlyle, Adrian Hanauer | Revenue: $10 million
METHODOLOGY
The 50 Most Valuable Women’s Sports Teams reflect Forbes’ 2025 WNBA and NWSL team valuation lists, as well as new estimates for individual European soccer teams. (The Golden State Valkyries, a WNBA expansion club that began play in May 2025, and NWSL expansion clubs in Boston and Denver that are set to begin play in 2026 were omitted from this year’s rankings.) Revenue estimates are rounded to the nearest $1 million and reflect the 2024 season for WNBA and NWSL teams and the 2023-24 season for European soccer teams. Playoff games were excluded from the revenue calculations for the WNBA and the NWSL.
The team values are enterprise values (equity plus net debt) and include the economics of each team’s stadium or arena but not the value of the real estate itself. The valuations similarly take into account ancillary revenue streams that are captured in the team’s financial statements, such as income from sponsorships or events at the team’s practice facility, without directly measuring the value of those other assets.
To compile the valuations, Forbes examined recent transaction data and spoke with industry insiders including team and league executives, team owners, institutional investors, investment bankers, advisors and consultants. The revenue estimates for the European women’s soccer teams are taken from Deloitte’s 2025 Football Money League report, with the exception of Chelsea, whose revenue was adjusted from roughly $15 million in the Deloitte report (and in the team’s annual filing with the U.K.’s Companies House) to $25 million.
All figures are in U.S. dollars. Revenue estimates for European soccer teams were converted based on exchange rates as of June 30, 2024 (£1 = $1.26; €1 = $1.07).
With reporting by Justin Birnbaum and Justin Teitelbaum.
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