The PWHL Seattle Torrent’s inaugural season is underway, making Seattle the only city where three major professional women’s leagues play. It is also the first to have two professional women’s sports teams share a venue, as the Storm and Torrent do at Climate Pledge Arena.
Although all three leagues — PWHL, WNBA and NWSL — are also represented in New York, the teams belong to the general metropolitan area, as opposed to one particular city like Seattle.
Seattle could welcome a fourth league next year, as the Athletes Unlimited Softball League is set to announce home cities for its teams in January.
The city is also home to the Seattle Majestics, a semiprofessional women’s tackle football team, the Seattle Tempest, a semiprofessional women’s ultimate frisbee team and added a USL W team in Salmon Bay FC last year, helping expand women’s soccer in the area.
It’s no surprise to the leaders of Seattle’s teams that the Emerald City is the center of the women’s sports stage.
An informal ranking of women’s sports cities by The Athletic in November placed Seattle No. 3 in the country thanks to its addition of a PWHL team and calling Seattle “a town of women’s sports legends,” where people are “all in on investing in growing the women’s game in their own backyard.”
So what makes this town one of, if not the best, for supporting and promoting women’s sports?
“Seattle is a very embracing city,” Storm co-owner Lisa Brummel told The Seattle Times. “For all of the things that people say about the ‘Seattle Freeze’, if you really want to talk about arms wide open to embracing new types of entertainment, new types of sports and new people showing what they can do, Seattle is that place.”
Added Reign FC’s General Manager Lesle Gallimore: “Choosing Seattle as a franchise city for many of these women’s sports has been a wise move because you’ll get a fan base. You’ll have people that are loyal and excited about attending your sport, following your sport, becoming a supporter in different ways. It’s not surprising to me, but it’s really cool to see.”
The Storm averaged 11,835 fans per regular season home game in 2025, which ranked top five in the league. They had 10 sellouts, including a season-high attendance of 18,343, maximum capacity at the arena, for the Storm’s game against Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever on June 24.
A crowd of 14,169 came to watch the Storm compete against the Phoenix Mercury in the designated “Forever Sue” game on Aug. 17, which included intermittent videos and live recognition of longtime Storm player Sue Bird. An eight-foot bronze statue of Bird was ceremoniously unveiled outside of Climate Pledge Arena earlier that day, making her the first WNBA player to have one in her honor.
The statue came less than a year after Seattle had a street in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood named after her and just over two years after her No. 10 jersey was hoisted up to the stadium’s rafters.
Despite Bird’s retirement in 2022, Storm’s attendance rates have increased by 25% in the past two years, from an average of 8,926 fans per game in 2023.
The Reign averaged 7,864 fans last season, below the league’s regular season average of 10,669 fans, according to Sports Business Journal. Nonetheless, the team has had its fair share of fanfare over the years.
The organization set a then-NWSL record when a crowd of 34,130 came to Lumen Field on Oct. 6, 2023 to witness star midfielder Megan Rapinoe’s last professional regular season home match. Many donned pink wigs in solidarity of the Olympic gold medalist’s famously pink hair. 16,598 fans attended a Reign game in Aug. 2024 at Lumen Field, which featured Rapinoe’s jersey retirement.
The Torrent made their home debut at Climate Pledge Arena on Nov. 28 in front of 16,014 fans, breaking the record for the largest crowd at a women’s hockey game in a U.S. arena.
Meghan Turner, the Torrent’s General Manager and transplant from the PWHL Boston Fleet, can’t quite pinpoint the cause of Seattle’s exceptional love for women’s sports just yet, but she’s grateful for it, nonetheless.
“I’m still learning the ‘why’ behind it, but I can tell you the impact that it’s had on us,” Turner said in the team’s media availability on Nov. 19. “We’ve felt the love from the very start … It’s been really cool. It’s a unique women’s sports market, and it’s obvious how valued women and women athletes are in Seattle. The superstars in Seattle are Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe and now [Torrent captain and Team USA star] Hilary Knight. That is really unique. In a lot of cities, it’s the male athletes that take that crown, but here it’s the women.”
Jen Barnes, the owner of Rough & Tumble, a Seattle bar that has centered its mission on promoting women’s sports and gender equity in sports viewing, pinpoints one major cause for Seattle’s extraordinary fan base.
“One of the key components is purely that Seattle was one of the first cities in the country to really lean into women’s professional sports,” Barnes said. “We had the ABL (American Basketball League) here, which then transitioned into the WNBA (in 1997). We were one of the first WNBA teams and a founding NWSL team in 2013. We are going on roughly three decades of professional women’s sports in Seattle. We are working with second and third generations of women’s sports fans.”
Since its opening in 2022, Rough & Tumble in Ballard has become one of the most popular bars in the city. There was an eight-hour line wrapped around the pub on its opening day. Barnes opened a second location in Columbia City on Dec. 5, which likewise had an hourslong wait to enter and has the Storm’s original game court as flooring.
“I don’t think every city out there would have been as successful as Seattle (for Rough & Tumble) back in 2022,” Barnes added. “In great part, our success is based upon the fact that this city has a built-in fan base that is already well-educated and passionate about following the women’s teams that they love.”
Gallimore, who has been with the Reign since 2023, felt the special nature of Seattle’s sports fans in 1994, long before Rough and Tumble opened. She moved from California to coach the UW women’s soccer team, a program she ultimately headed for 26 seasons. The Huskies made it to the NCAA Sweet 16 in her debut season.
“The fandom was real,” Gallimore said. “Women’s soccer and softball came out of the gate swinging. We built a fan base pretty quickly.”
The success of Seattle’s college women’s teams is also a prominent reason for the city’s deep love for the women’s game.
“The city of Seattle has always been incredibly supportive of women’s sports,” Brummel said. “It started with the colleges around here, UW, SPU, SU, all the schools in the general area have had great women’s programs, and the city has supported that. As professional women’s sports has grown, it’s been obvious that Seattle would be a city that would support them in a similar way.”
The UW women’s basketball team originated in 1981, nearly two decades before the Storm’s arrival in 2000 and over three before the NWSL’s Reign. The Huskies have made 20 NCAA appearances during that time, including seven consecutive under head coach Chris Gobrecht between 1984-90. The team has also won five regular season titles and one tournament title.
WNBA star guard and Olympic gold medalist Kelsey Plum, who spent all four years of her college career at UW (2013-17), really put the Huskies’ program on the map. Plum broke the all-time NCAA scoring record with 3,527 points her senior year as well as the single season scoring record with 1,109 points. She was considered the unanimous Player of the Year.
“[College] is where the first visibility of women’s sports really happens,” Brummel added. “When a sport gets to the prominence of getting media [attention], that really starts in college, and then it grows from there … UW women’s basketball (which made 12 NCAA tournament appearances before 2000) is a great example of that before the Storm and the Reign were here.”
UW women’s soccer has achieved similar success since its first season in 1991. The Huskies have earned 18 total NCAA tournament berths, including eight Sweet 16 and three Elite Eight appearances. Their most recent success came this Dec. with a trip to the Elite Eight, despite being unranked for much of the season.
Olympic gold medalist Hope Solo, who was a goalkeeper for the Huskies between 1999-2002, helped put the program on the map. The future U.S. women’s national team star (2000-16) was the top goalkeeper in Pac-10 history and ended her college career as Washington’s all-time leader in shutouts (18) and saves (325).
UW’s most successful women’s program might be softball, though. The program has earned 30 NCAA tournament berths since their 1993 creation, including 15 trips to the Women’s College World Series and as recently as 2023.
The success of Seattle’s women’s college teams has seemingly segued into success at the professional level.
The Storm have won four WNBA titles (2004, ’10, ’18 and ’20), tied for the most in the league, and are just one of two teams who have never lost a WNBA Finals alongside the now-defunct Houston Comets. The Storm have qualified for the WNBA playoffs in 20 of their 26 total seasons in Seattle.
Although the Reign have never won the NWSL championship, they have reached the title game three times (2014, ’15 and ’23). The franchise has also won the NWSL shield, the title for regular season winner, a record-tying three times (2014, ’15 and ’22).
Seattle’s men’s and women’s pro teams now work hard to support each other’s successes as fans and business partners, and they have every plan to bring the Torrent into the fold.
“I’m friends with the other owners of the teams, and we talk a lot about partnerships and the support we give to each other, and in turn, the support the players give to each other,” Brummel said. “ It’s really amazing to see that sports in this city [exist] as one. When the Mariners go on a run, we all go on a run. When the Storm goes on a run, they all go on a run with us.”
