Caitlin Clark, Cincinnati’s expansion bid and taking NWSL to a new level – Jeff Berding interview
If you ask Jeff Berding where the inspiration to bring an NWSL franchise to Cincinnati stems from, the seasoned sports executive will take you back to 2015.
That’s when he and Carl Lindner III launched FC Cincinnati, now a club in Major League Soccer, but then a team entering the second-division United Soccer League.
“Having a women’s team is something we’ve always talked about. It was just about the timing,” Berding, co-lead of NWSL Cincinnati’s expansion bid, tells “We’ve had conversations over the years, but it wasn’t the right time because our core was still being strengthened to the point that we could take on a new franchise.”
But now, after a decade-long buildup, he says, “FC Cincinnati is well positioned, with proven infrastructure, to help take NWSL to a new level.”
The group’s bid received a significant boost last week when WNBA Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark joined their investment group, and again when their bid was named a finalist to land what would be the NWSL’s 16th franchise. The other two finalists are nearby Cleveland, which previously unveiled plans to build a $150million stadium for a prospective NWSL club, and Denver, which, unlike both cities in Ohio, has said little publicly since announcing its bid in 2023.
The Cincinnati proposal is the only one publicly backed by an MLS club, meaning the would-be NWSL team would share access to the city’s three-year-old TQL Stadium. The proposal includes building a new training facility exclusively for the women’s team, with the group actively pursuing $5million in public funds for a development site.
“We have the ability to hit the ground running and be one of the top performing NWSL franchises, from a business and facility perspective, right out of the gate,” said Berding, who is also co-CEO of FC Cincinnati, which he founded after 19 years with the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals.
The proposed training facility would be based in the suburbs of Hamilton County, which includes much of the city centre, and would “mirror” FC Cincinnati’s $30million Mercy Health training center in Milford, on the eastern outskirts of town. The 24-acre facility includes three full-size, floodlit soccer fields, and a 30,000-square-foot, multilevel building that houses the team.
While the facility would not be ready in time for the 2026 season, the ownership group envisions the NWSL club having access to the site’s fields for training while buildings on the property are constructed, similar to how FC Cincinnati functioned when they first joined MLS in 2019.
“We will have access to the site and have fields there ready to go for the 2026 season,” Berding said. “The construction of the facility would still be underway, but we would use, effectively, a temporary building on-site to house the locker room and meeting rooms and medical suite, etc., while the primary building is underway.”
Having a training facility exclusive to a women’s team is a key part of Cincinnati’s bid and is especially important as the NWSL emphasizes the role club infrastructure plays in the league’s continued growth.
“There’s probably nothing more important than our teams controlling their own destiny, both from a stadium and a training facility perspective,” NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said last week. The league is even working on a “white paper” for stakeholders to help illustrate the benefits for communities when investing in purpose-built infrastructure for their women’s teams, Berman said.
The Cincinnati ownership group did its own due diligence, speaking with several clubs in the NWSL and Europe to better understand the ingredients needed to run a successful team. They were keen to know which model would work best for them given those clubs’ experiences.
“It is seen as a best practice to have separate facilities, so when the women are coming to work, it’s theirs. There’s ownership and pride. It’s not shared. It is facility. It’s weight room. It’s medical suite. It’s player lounge and fields,” Berding said. “It allows a greater focus and ownership for the performance of these athletes and the team… Everyone we heard from agreed that, if they had a choice, if they had the opportunity, having two separate (facilities) would certainly be preferred.”
The ownership group would, however, share resources in other ways.
While any NWSL club will have “completely separate” staff on the sporting side and dedicated personnel “fully engaged to support, lead, manage, (and) run the business” of the women’s side, it will also have the support of FC Cincinnati’s executives, Berding said.
The teams will also split access to the $300million TQL Stadium, which is the second-largest, soccer-specific venue in Major League Soccer. Because FC Cincinnati control the building, they would work out the schedules for when each team play there. That can be an advantage, compared to only being a tenant. In that instance, a club would have little say over a venue’s availability, which can prove problematic in the NWSL.
“Our owners have contributed enormously to build this best-in-class stadium,” Berding said. “The way we view it is we’re going to be making a material investment into this women’s franchise and we’re going to prioritize the schedule in a way that lets this team hit the ground running with the necessary dates and access to the calendar to draw fans and be successful.”
FC Cincinnati ended the 2024 season with the eighth-largest average attendance in the league, at 25,265. The top five crowds across MLS were all at venues that exceed TQL’s 26,000 capacity. The stadium has hosted both the men’s and women’s U.S. national teams and is the hometown stadium for one of the women’s game’s biggest stars, Gotham FC’s USWNT midfielder Rose Lavelle.
“The women’s (national) team draws enormously well,” Berding said. “It’s worth noting most of the people filling the stadium for the U.S. Women’s National Team are not FC Cincinnati ticket-buyers. So there’s this whole universe that wants to support a women’s team beyond just the people that are coming to watch professional soccer.”
Infrastructure is likely to be a deciding factor for the NWSL when awarding its next franchise, especially as Boston has been battling its own issues since securing the rights last year to field the league’s 15th team. (That ownership group proposed renovating the 10,000-capacity George R White Stadium in the city’s Franklin Park as a home venue, but the project’s progress has crawled, with ongoing backlash from locals.)
When considering the options for the league’s 16th team, the would-be ownership group in Cleveland has also made a strong case to the NWSL by proposing plans for a new stadium, while working to secure a training facility. While the Denver group, spearheaded by locally-born former NWSL player Jordan Angeli, has not publicly shared its infrastructure plans, it must have a compelling case to be considered a finalist.
One aspect of the Cincinnati bid that cannot be replicated, though, is the star power that comes from Clark’s investment.
There is no denying the “Caitlin Clark effect”, which Berding said their group already experienced when the basketball star made her stake in their ownership public. Social media posts rose from 10,000 posts a day to nearly half a million.
“It was Caitlin’s desire to go public. We didn’t make that decision for her, or on her behalf,” Berding said. “She’s very proud to be a part of this effort and she’s very competitive. She wants to win and see this happen. She’s 100 miles away (with her Indianapolis-based WNBA team) and she’s going to have a great opportunity to be involved in a meaningful way.”
While Berding declined to elaborate much on what that involvement may look like, he likened Clark’s potential ownership role to Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson’s post-playing career.
NBA great Johnson owns stakes in teams across multiple sports, including current MLB baseball champions the Los Angeles Dodgers, the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, LAFC of MLS, the Washington Commanders in the NFL and NWSL’s Washington Spirit. He was seen alongside the Spirit’s majority owner Michele Kang at the NWSL championship game in Kansas City last week, where their team lost 1-0 to the Orlando Pride.
“I look at someone like Magic Johnson, who has not only been an iconic player but has since owned teams, has helped run teams and really brings his business and playing acumen to what has been a very successful post-playing career,” Berding said. “I’m not going to speak for Caitlin, but I believe she has a similar mindset.”
It’s expected that the NWSL will announce the winning bid before the end of the month. Last week, Berman described the process as “ongoing” and said there would be “news to share in the coming weeks.”
In Cincinnati, the obvious hope is its proposal will be strong enough to land the league’s newest team, between its infrastructure proposals, celebrity co-owner and nearly a decade of preparation.
“We spent 10 years building a soccer community here — some of it was latent and some of it has organically grown because of our values and what we represent for Cincinnati,” Berding said. “It takes time to build fandom and we have the benefit of, and the NWSL would be the beneficiary of, 10 years of work.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
FC Cincinnati, Indiana Fever, Soccer, NWSL, Sports Business
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