Report: PWHL eyes rapid expansion to 12 teams

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Expansion to Seattle and Vancouver has given the Professional Women’s Hockey League eight teams for the 2025-26 season, but don’t expect the league to remain at that number for long.

Front Office Sports reported Wednesday that the 3-year-old league is targeting rapid expansion and could have a dozen teams at this time next year.

Seattle and Vancouver were selected as expansion cities after the PWHL held its Takeover Tour last season, placing neutral-site games in nine cities to determine the viability for future teams in various communities.

Now, the Takeover Tour is headed to 11 cities — seven first-time locales and four returning cities. Denver, Detroit, Edmonton and Quebec City will get second looks, with the tour stopping at Chicago, Dallas and Washington, D.C., and Calgary, Halifax, Hamilton and Winnipeg in Canada for the first time.

“If we have four really strong markets, then that’s the direction we’ll move in,” Amy Scheer, the league’s executive vice president of business operations, told Front Office Sports.

“We’ve proven that time is overrated,” she added. “In Year One, we launched six teams in just a couple of months. This year we launched two teams in about seven months. We’ll stick to that timeline.”

Even if 12 teams are not in place next fall, that is the plan as quickly as it can be accomplished.

“(That number) helps us add more value on the media end, partnership end, more markets for us to grow in, build (a) fan base. The more our numbers grow, the more value we have as a league, the more value we have against our partnerships we sell, the more merchandise we sell,” Scheer told the publication. “Those two things — growth and profitability — are not separated. They’re both goals and both that we continue to embark on.”

Other current teams are located in Boston, Minnesota, Montreal, New York, Ottawa and Seattle.

–Field Level Media