Even by the city’s own high standards, things have been strange in Washington DC lately.
On U street Friday night, the usual throngs of drunken party goers were decidedly smaller. Lines outside clubs and bars were nonexistent. The week prior, residents of the District watched as the reality of US president Donald Trump’s “crackdown” unfolded in front of them. Police set up checkpoints in some of their city’s immigrant strongholds and approached other people at random. The mere presence of the military on the streets of the US capital has been an uneasy sight for many longtime Washingtonians, who already lack voting representation in Congress and are so frequently at the mercy and whim of the federal government.
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Yet even amid this uneasiness, on that same Friday night, 11,691 journeyed to the south-west waterfront to watch the NWSL’s Washington Spirit take on Racing Louisville. In the 51st minute of the match, patches of the crowd at Audi Field broke into a “free DC” chant – a nod to the District’s long-running quest to become the 51st state. Before long, the entirety of the stadium joined in.
The match itself was an entertaining, end-to-end affair. The crowd at Audi Field felt energetic and invested, exploding into bedlam when the Spirit’s recent prize catch – Ballon D’Or nominee Sofia Cantore – smashed home the opener from distance. Louisville later equalized and took the lead late in the match but when Spirit attacker Rosemonda Kouassi salvaged a draw nine minutes into second-half stoppage time, the entire building shook.
It’s the type of response that the stadium’s primary tenants, Major League Soccer’s DC United, can only dream of these days. Mired in last place, the club has watched as the Spirit have approached, if not wrestled away, their grip on the hearts and minds of local soccer fans. In just a few short years, the Spirit have used an ownership change and an accompanying influx of cash and ambition to mainstream themselves in the DC sports scene.
United, MLS’ original dynasty, have done their part to step aside. With the exception of a few bright moments, the club has oscillated between being uninspiring and downright awful over the last decade, costing them the goodwill of many longtime fans.
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NWSL clubs across the country are making massive inroads in terms of popularity and relevance. But there are few other markets where the narrowing of the popularity gap between men’s and women’s clubs has been made so apparent as it has in DC, where the Spirit may have already eliminated the gap completely.
“The whiplash of vibes could not be further apart,” said Douglas Reyes-Ceron, co-founder of Rose Room Collective, a supporters group that supports the Spirit and United alike. “It’s reaching a point on the DC United side, where it’s so fucking dire that people are just walking away. The Spirit have earned so much credence and cache with this fanbase that it’s just a lot easier to weather the storm with them.”
United’s last home match, which took place before the deployment of federal troops, also featured a protest. As they have all year, supporters in the stadium’s north end chanted “sell the team” – a sentiment which used to be muted and sometimes felt a little unreasonable, but which has now become impossible to ignore.
Some of those fans have supported the club since its inception 30 years ago. In that era, it drew big crowds and won three of the first four MLS Cups, then won another in 2004 – the last time it appeared in the league’s showpiece event. While other clubs built their own stadiums and found new revenue streams in the mid-aughts, United struggled to do so and languished at the decrepit, raccoon-invaded confines of RFK Stadium. Losses piled up and, in 2012, the club’s longtime ownership sold to Indonesian businessman Erick Thohir and current CEO and managing partner Jason Levien.
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Levien joined with promises to get a stadium deal done, and he did admirably well in doing so, brokering the deal with the District government that got Audi Field built. In the meantime, he sought to limit the club’s losses. United stopped spending money on staff, on players, or much of anything, really. The club began to lose touch with longtime fans and failed to attract new ones. Crucially, they lost the affection of the club’s latino fanbase, an essential component to success in the District, where immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico make up a little more than 10% of the population.
The club experienced a resurgence in 2018 when Audi Field finally opened. They brought in English legend Wayne Rooney and for a time, matches once again became a happening. But the club hasn’t made the playoffs since he left to join Derby County. Many fans are upset, but more alarming is that even more of them simply don’t care any more.
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Like United, the Spirit are a league original, having taken the field during the NWSL’s inaugural season in 2013. But unlike United, the Spirit’s path towards relevance was more gradual. The club had a modest and passionate following and plenty of potential, but fortunes turned after Steve Baldwin bought the club in 2018. In 2021, the club was rocked by allegations that its head coach, Richie Burke, had been abusive towards players. Baldwin himself was accused of nepotism and incompetence and his co-owner, businesswoman and philanthropist Michele Kang, called on him to sell the team. What ensued was something straight out of a soap opera, with the two trading jabs in public and private and Kang eventually emerging with sole control.
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Kang has gone on to be among the loudest, most supportive voices of the women’s game in the US and worldwide – since taking over the Spirit, she has bought majority control in OL Lyonnes in France and the newly-promoted London City Lionesses in the Women’s Super League. Like Levien, Kang has had her shortcomings as an owner, butting heads with some of her staff as she learns the ropes of sports ownership. But her influence is undeniable. She has unquestionably maximized the value of some of the Spirit’s prized players – USWNT megastar Trinity Rodman in particular – pumping millions of her own money into player care, marketing and the rest of it.
Perhaps more importantly, the Spirit under Kang have taken concrete steps to connect with their fans. The club established a supporters liaison, something United still lacks, and has spoken out on issues in a way that many clubs – MLS, NWSL or otherwise – do not. Amid the current madness in DC, the Spirit did well enough to address it in their own oblique way – via an Instagram post reading, in part: “As your neighbors, we walk beside you.”
“The Spirit have still had their share of foolishness,” said Reyes-Ceron, “But when they made the foundation the way it is, that foundation can withstand a lot more bullshit. The community surrounding the team has grown a lot bigger and a lot more inclusive.”
They have also done something else United haven’t done: win. The Spirit lifted the club’s first championship in 2021 and were runners up in 2024. When results have faltered, few could blame a lack of ambition or financial investment. Quite the opposite, actually: it has sometimes felt like half of the Spirit’s roster is missing during any given international window.
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In the meantime, United have run out of excuses. For years the club blamed its stadium situation for their woes, saying that losses forced them into thrift. When they do finally spend money, the team often wasted it on players that, for one reason or another, just didn’t fit. Results never improved. Watching the club’s most recent big-name signing – former Crystal Palace and Liverpool striker Christian Benteke – is simultaneously inspiring and rage-inducing. His often beautiful play is entirely squandered by a downright dreadful team; an excellent finisher who rarely gets the chance to finish.
United have cycled through coaches (four non-interim hires since 2021), through general managers, through players, through front office personnel. Levien, along with co-owner Steve Kaplan, have added a laundry list of minority owners over the years but their involvement remains constant.
“The only common thread remaining is ownership,” said Reyes-Ceron. “The fanbase feels that way. It’s concentrated and pointed now.”
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The Spirit, meanwhile, feel as if they haven’t even touched their ceiling. Kang is now working alongside Levien to push the DC government toward renovating and expanding Audi Field, which is less than a decade old. The Spirit have averaged over 15,000 fans a game this year, third in the NWSL, and they’ve sold Audi Field out multiple times in the past few years, about as frequently as United have. In June, a Spirit match on a Sunday afternoon outdrew a DC United one a night prior, a first on a shared weekend for the clubs.
The Spirit have their own challenges. They’ve set the bar high for themselves, having featured Rodman and any other number of quality players. Like Inter Miami in MLS, the Spirit are now among the league’s standard-bearers. Fans of the club expect ambition and excellence, unlike their landlords, for whom winning at all would be an improvement.
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