One of many Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League’s new groups shall be very acquainted for followers.
The league is bringing again the Utah Royals, a workforce that existed from 2018 to 2020, for the 2024 season, it introduced Saturday.
The NWSL’s growth was beforehand reported to be including groups within the Bay Space and Boston along with the return of Utah, with a reported growth price of $50 million. Utah and the Bay Space are reportedly on monitor for 2024, whereas Boston will get its workforce later.
The Utah possession group is led by David Blitzer and Ryan Smith, who additionally personal Actual Salt Lake of MLS. Smith additionally owns the NBA’s Utah Jazz, whereas Blitzer has stakes in a number of groups, together with Crystal Palace of the Premier League, the New Jersey Devils and the Philadelphia 76ers.
Additionally within the possession group are Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey and Kraft Analytics Group CEO Jessica Gelman, per ESPN. The group acquired their workforce at a major low cost in comparison with the opposite two growth groups, reportedly paying between $2 million and $5 million.
The workforce will play its video games at Actual Salt Lake’s America First Credit score Union Discipline and shall be run by workforce president Michelle Hyncik, a former Harvard soccer participant who labored as authorized counsel for the MLS and RSL.
First model Royals moved to Kansas Metropolis beneath cloud of scandal
The return of the Royals comes three years after the earlier incarnation of the workforce was bought amid allegations in opposition to workforce proprietor Dell Loy Hansen, who additionally owned Actual Salt Lake, of racist remarks and a poisonous office tradition, together with using slurs.
Former Royals supervisor Craig Harrington was also among the many coaches and executives cited within the NWSL/NWSL Gamers Affiliation report, in his case for being verbally abusive and making sexual advances towards Royals gamers.
The Royals ultimately ceased operations and their belongings had been ultimately bought to a bunch in Kansas Metropolis that included Brittany Mahomes, the spouse of Kansas Metropolis Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes. That workforce turned the Kansas Metropolis Present, which went 10-6-6 final season and reached the NWSL championship sport.
Whereas the primary Royals’ time in Utah led to scandal, the NWSL made certain to notice the fan assist within the metropolis was a significant cause for its resolution, saying the workforce had the second-highest common attendance throughout its three seasons of existence.
When Blitzer and Smith bought Actual Salt Lake, that deal reportedly got here with the choice to accumulate an NWSL growth workforce, and the result’s Utah getting again a soccer workforce it by no means ought to have misplaced.