PWHL Expansion and the Growing Popularity of Women’s Professional Hockey – The UCSD Guardian

When the Professional Women’s Hockey League was announced in August 2023, fans doubted it would be a successful venture. Previous attempts to organize professional women’s hockey leagues – from the National Women’s Hockey League to the Canadian Women’s Hockey League – have all failed. Plagued by decentralized leadership, chronic underfunding and an apparent lack of interest, professional women’s hockey leagues seemed doomed to extinction.

Just four years after the collapse of the CWHL and just months after the Premier Hockey Federation closed its doors, the PWHL pledged six teams to the United States and Canada. By the end of its inaugural 2024 season, the PWHL had delivered on that promise. The league attracted more than 300,000 fans over 72 games, breaking attendance records for professional women’s hockey in North America. The league destroyed an American arena attendance record for women’s hockey17,335 units packed at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, then destroyed again, sold out Madison Square Garden with more than 18,000 attendees. The league expanded from six teams in 2024 to eleven in 2026 and is expected to announce a twelfth team soon. At the end of the third season, the future of the PWHL looks bright.

The league’s astonishing early success begs the question: what’s in it? Why is the PWHL thriving while its predecessors failed?

The league certainly has one thing that the NWHL and CWHL did not: solid financial support. The CWHL did not have the funding to pay its players and relied on raising sponsorships as a non-profit organization.

The PWHL is 100% supported by Mark Walter, owner and chairman of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and his wife Kimbra Walter through the Mark Walter Group. The group’s support promises at least 10 seasons of fully funded PWHL hockey.

Most important, however, is the league’s ability to pay its players. The PWHL has a guaranteed salary, allowing women’s professional players to make hockey their day job instead of having to manage separate careers while also playing in top leagues. The league mandates a minimum salary of $35,000, and at least six players on each team must earn $80,000 or more per season. In 2025, forward Emily Clark of the Ottawa Charge became the first player in the league with an extension worth more than $100,000, and many top players like Montreal Victoire captain forward Marie-Philip Poulin are making tens of thousands more per season.

The PWHL also thrives on its accessibility. While NHL games are barricaded behind ESPN paywalls, all PWHL games are broadcast live on YouTube. This past seasonviews increased by 77% from previous seasons, with people tuning in from 106 countries. The league also has a far-reaching social media presence. In addition to team accounts, the official PWHL Instagram account received more than 800 million impressions during the 2025-2026 season. Many PWHL players also have a personal presence on social media, attracting fans with their personalities and game day fashion. It’s incredibly easy for fans to connect with their favorite players, and the more casual, unpolished look into the lives of professional female athletes serves to strengthen the sport. First off, Boston Fleet goalkeeper Aerin Frankel’s Instagram account is completely dedicated to ranking of Caesar salads has about 65,000 followers.

In addition to virtual accessibility, the PWHL also praises her Takeover tourwhere teams travel across the US and Canada to play games in cities that don’t have franchises. The 2025-2026 tour – which visited eleven cities for sixteen matches – attracted more than 200,000 fans from all fifty states and thirteen Canadian provinces and territories. The 2026 Winter Olympics built on this fame. PWHL athletes played on both sides of the riveting gold medal match between the US and Canada, and the game showcased stars like Seattle Torrent captain Hilary Knight and Boston Fleet captain Megan Keller to an international audience. The telecast of the gold medal match averaged 5.3 million viewers and peaked 7.7 millionbecoming the most watched women’s hockey broadcast ever.

The reach of the Takeover Tour and the Olympic Games prove that the PWHL is not just after success or money, but also shows that women’s hockey is a popular, profitable and legitimate sport in its own right. Women’s hockey has long been considered secondary to men’s hockey, or as an event that happens once every four years and resurfaces every Winter Games. For many young women, playing professional hockey is no longer just a dream, but a real and achievable goal, and it’s clear: USA Hockey recently reported that program registrations for female athletes at all age levels exceeded 100,000 for the first time.

Women’s hockey is growing due to the early success of the PWHL, and that momentum shows no signs of slowing down. No longer will female athletes be sidelined and undervalued; they will be able to pursue hockey as a legitimate career, something that once seemed out of the question. The growth of the sport is a signal to the general public that if given the opportunity – the care, the funding and the audience that allows athletes to focus all their energy on playing – women’s hockey will flourish.