Heavy snow and difficult travel expected again, heaviest snow in southern Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Minnesota’s women’s pre-professional soccer team, Aurora, could be on the cusp of going pro, three years after it first formed. 

The club has attracted enough investment to make a second bid to join the National Women’s Soccer League. Andrea Yoch, an Aurora co-founder, said the team put its bid in Friday. And though there’s speculation about the team being a shoe-in, she said it won’t know the outcome until the end of the year.   

“It’s a very secret process,” Yoch said. “We understand there could be up to 11 cities trying to get a team and there’s only one spot being awarded for 2026.”

Yoch joined Morning Edition Thursday to discuss the NWSL bid process and how the team’s performance and a growing interest in women’s sports is attracting investors. 

The conversation below has been edited lightly for clarity. Listen to the full conversation by clicking play on the player above.

The Sports Business Journal yesterday wrote that Aurora is one of three teams to submit bids, and some took that to mean you’re ranked in the top three. Is there any truth to that?

 listed the teams that submitted bids or the cities that have submitted bids. It was a local publication that 

There’s no rankings of anything right now. It’s a very secret process. And so we can confirm that we did submit a bid last Friday to try to take Aurora to the NWSL. But anything else is very much cloak and dagger. We don’t really know what’s happening in the other markets.

So the team last put in a bid in 2022. And in 2023, the club said it needed more time to secure the necessary investment. You’ve put in a bid this year. I’m curious how the investment landscape has changed in that time?

When we submitted the bid in 2022, we only had one season under our belts. And while it was an incredible inaugural season, we really didn’t have enough ramp from August, which is when we were approached about submitting a bid, until November, which is when the bids were due. So it just was not enough time to pull the money together. 

In the last two years, we now have two more seasons with proof of concept and have attracted even more attention. And it was easier to go out and start talking to people about what a great investment women’s soccer is. They’ve also seen the valuations on these teams go crazy around the United States.

And so there’s much more support around. This isn’t just a good idea because it’s important to support the women — it is actually a really great business decision.

Does Minnesota’s women’s sports atmosphere  contribute to that? The Lynx have long been successful and have had a strong fan base. Now the PWHL’s Minnesota team is doing the same thing.

One of the things that we submitted is evidence of proven success for women’s sports. Not just the Lynx and everything that Carly Knox and Cheryl Reeve have done there, but the PWHL, the women’s Final Four was massively successful this past spring — it outsold the men’s Big Ten Championship final for the year before that.

Lynx ticket sales spike

Minnesota women’s hockey team sets a new standard

So all the way around, we have a whole list of successful women’s events and not just people buying tickets, but companies stepping up to sponsor the teams, sponsor the events, hosting everybody when they’re here. And that is a very important part of this process, is showing that your market will support women’s sports and has supported women’s sports. 

If the Aurora is chosen to join the league, what does that mean for the franchise and the current players on the team?

It’s a little bit too early to really know how that would work. I was at Minnesota United when we were awarded the MLS franchise, and basically the players and everybody else would go through tryouts and preseason training, just the same as if we were already in the pros. 

The 2026 season is the year that we’ve applied to enter the league, so we’d have some time to figure that out. And hopefully, you know, we have players that are talented enough to make it. But those are things that will be decided well down the road by the soccer side of the business.

When do you expect to hear about that bid?

So it’s a process that will go on for the rest of 2024, which is very painful for me. For anyone who knows me, I’m terrible at waiting. It is a slow process where they go through all the bids. 

We understand there could be up to 11 cities trying to get a team and there’s only one spot being awarded for 2026. 

Hopefully, we’ll have a decision by the end of 2024.

Sports

Shows

Morning Edition

NewsPartners

Homepage

On Air

Minnesota Aurora FC

Phil Picardi

Host

Megan Burks

Author

Lukas Levin

Minnesota’s women’s pre-professional soccer team, Aurora, has made a bid to go professional. Their announcement comes just three years after the team formed, and at a time when Minnesota’s women’s sports teams are catching fire. 

What to know about Aurora’s bid to go pro

Stephen Maturen for MPR News

Fans cheer as players take the field before the game

What to know about Aurora’s bid to go pro

Go Deeper.

Like this?