CNN
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The Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League (NWSL) might be returning to Utah in 2024 after the league revealed the Utah Royals as the most recent growth staff on Saturday.
The Royals had been a part of the NWSL from 2018 to 2020 and would be the league’s thirteenth staff.
Main League Soccer’s (MLS) Actual Salt Lake homeowners Ryan Smith and David Blitzer are a part of the membership’s possession group. Blitzer’s International Soccer Holdings personal stakes in Premier League membership Crystal Palace, Augsburg FC of the German Bundesliga, Portuguese membership GD Estoril Praia and Waasland-Beveren of Belgian’s Challenger Professional League.
Blitzer can be half proprietor of the MLB’s Cleveland Guardians, NHL’s New Jersey Devils and the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. Smith is the proprietor of the NBA’s Utah Jazz.
“After we acquired Actual Salt Lake final yr, we mentioned it was a matter of when, not if, the NWSL would return to Utah. This has at all times been an integral a part of our mission. With right now’s announcement, we’re thrilled to meet the promise we made to our unimaginable fan base,” Blitzer mentioned in an announcement. “We’re grateful for the chance to make use of our sources and platform to take girls’s soccer to the following degree whereas inspiring future gamers and followers globally.”
Smith added, “We’re excited to broaden the ‘One Utah’ household and produce the Royals again to Utah. Having skilled girls’s soccer again within the state has at all times been a prime precedence for David Blitzer and myself, and could be very significant to us, the followers, our companions, and your complete state.”
The membership will play its house video games at America First Credit score Union Discipline, shared with Actual Salt Lake.
“We’re delighted to welcome Utah Royals FC and its devoted fan base again into the league,” NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman mentioned in an announcement. “The return of the ladies’s recreation to Utah, the place soccer roots run deep, is a victory for gamers and followers alike. Because the Royals start this new chapter underneath the brand new possession and management, I’m assured the membership will construct a player-first group geared up with the instruments to thrive on and off the pitch.”