Purpose Takes Center Stage as Women’s Sports Build Stadiums of Their Own

A new analysis finds purpose-built venues could unlock billions of dollars for women’s sports, showing what can happen when investment and infrastructure catch up with potential.

THE NEWS

Women’s sports have spent years demonstrating that fans will show up.

Now, teams and investors are increasingly building places specifically for them to show up to.

A new analysis from global design firm Populous and women’s sports investment fund Project Level estimates that a purpose-built stadium could generate between $1 billion and $3.8 billion in additional cumulative revenue over 30 years for a women’s sports team.

The findings, reported by The Athletic, point to infrastructure as one of the next major opportunities in the rapidly growing women’s sports industry.

Kansas City is already providing a real-world test.

The Kansas City Current opened CPKC Stadium in 2024, the first stadium in the world purpose-built for a professional women’s sports team. The roughly $140 million venue seats 11,500 fans and was designed around the team and its supporters rather than adapting a stadium built primarily for another tenant.

The results have been significant.

According to figures cited in the new analysis, the Current generated $10.1 million in revenue in 2023. After moving into CPKC Stadium, revenue reached $36 million in 2024. The club’s valuation also climbed, from $75 million in 2023 to $182 million in 2024 and $315 million in 2025, according to Sportico figures cited by The Athletic.

Demand has grown enough that the Current are planning to expand the stadium to approximately 18,000 seats.

Kansas City is not alone.

Denver Summit FC is planning a purpose-built, 14,500-seat stadium expected to open for the 2028 NWSL season. The project is part of a broader wave of investment in facilities designed specifically around women’s professional sports.

For years, the question surrounding women’s sports was whether there was enough demand to justify greater investment.

Increasingly, the question is becoming whether the infrastructure is keeping up with the demand already there.

PURPOSE

Purpose can change what we choose to build.

It asks us to look beyond what exists today and consider what could become possible if we intentionally created the conditions for people to thrive.

That is what makes the stadium movement in women’s sports bigger than a construction story.

For decades, elite women athletes often competed in facilities and systems designed primarily around men’s teams. They could participate, but the infrastructure wasn’t necessarily built around their experience, their fans or the long-term growth of their sport.

Purpose-built venues begin with a different question:

What would we create if we designed around their potential from the start?

Kansas City offers an early answer.

When investment began reflecting the potential of the team and its supporters, that potential had more room to grow.

VALUES

Belief. Opportunity. Stewardship. Contribution.

Investment is one way institutions demonstrate what they value.

Belief sees potential before the outcome is guaranteed.

Opportunity creates room for that potential to emerge.

Stewardship asks how resources can be invested for lasting value rather than short-term results.

And contribution recognizes that athletes and fans aren’t simply beneficiaries of investment. They are creating value themselves.

The growth of women’s sports is increasingly demonstrating what can happen when those values reinforce one another.

PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE

One principle stands out:

Build for potential, not simply precedent.

Precedent tells us what has happened before. Potential invites us to imagine what people might accomplish under different conditions.

There is also an important principle of empowerment at work.

Greater control over a venue can give teams more influence over scheduling, sponsorships, merchandise, concessions, premium experiences and events beyond game day. Instead of simply fitting within infrastructure controlled by someone else, teams gain greater ability to shape their own future.

That can create mutual benefit.

Athletes gain a platform built around their sport. Fans gain an experience designed with them in mind. Teams gain new ways to grow revenue and relationships. Investors participate in an expanding market. Communities gain gathering places, jobs and economic activity.

The opportunity grows because more people have a meaningful stake in its success.

ACTION

This story offers a question worth asking far beyond sports:

Are we building around people’s potential, or asking people to continually prove themselves within structures built for something else?

For leaders, that might mean examining whether workplace systems allow people to contribute their strengths.

For communities, it could mean asking whether residents closest to challenges have meaningful opportunities to shape solutions.

For organizations, it may mean reconsidering whether yesterday’s assumptions are limiting tomorrow’s possibilities.

And for each of us, it can be as simple as recognizing potential in someone before the evidence feels undeniable.

Sometimes people don’t need someone else to create their potential.

They need conditions that give it room to emerge.

COMPASS CHECK

Where might you be relying on precedent to determine what is possible, when investing in someone’s potential could reveal something entirely new?

NEWS SOURCES

The Athletic, September 4, 2026: Reporting on the Populous and Project Level analysis examining the economic potential of purpose-built stadiums for women’s sports.

Kansas City Current: Information on CPKC Stadium and its development as the first stadium purpose-built for a professional women’s sports team.

Additional reporting: Coverage of the Kansas City Current’s stadium expansion plans and Denver Summit FC’s planned purpose-built stadium.