When the Professional Women’s Hockey League was announced in August 2023, fans doubted whether it would be a successful endeavor. 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 fallen apart. Plagued by decentralized leadership, chronic underfunding, and an apparent lack of interest, professional women’s hockey leagues seemed doomed to fold.
Just four years after the CWHL’s collapse and mere months after the Premier Hockey Federation closed its doors, the PWHL promised 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 drew in more than 300,000 fans over 72 games, breaking North American professional women’s hockey attendance records. The league destroyed an American arena attendance record for women’s hockey, packing 17,335 into Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, and then destroyed it again, selling out Madison Square Garden with over 18,000 people in attendance. The league expanded from six teams in 2024 to 11 in 2026 and is expected to announce a 12th team soon. At the tail end of its third season, the PWHL’s future seems bright.
The league’s astounding early success begs the question: What gives? Why is the PWHL thriving when its predecessors failed?
The league certainly has one thing that the NWHL and the CWHL didn’t: solid financial backing. The CWHL lacked the funding to pay its players and relied on soliciting sponsorships as a nonprofit.
The PWHL is 100% backed by Los Angeles Dodgers owner and Chairman Mark Walter and his wife Kimbra Walter through the Mark Walter Group. The group’s support promises at least 10 seasons of PWHL hockey with full funding.
Most importantly, however, is the league’s ability to pay its players. The PWHL has a guaranteed salary, which allows professional women’s players to make hockey their day job rather than having to manage separate careers while also playing in top-level leagues. The league mandates a minimum salary of $35,000, and at least six players on each team must make $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 exceeding $100,000, and many top players like the Montreal Victoire’s captain, forward Marie-Philip Poulin, make tens of thousands more per season.
The PWHL also thrives from its accessibility. While NHL games are barricaded behind ESPN paywalls, all PWHL games are broadcasted live on YouTube. This past season, views jumped 77% from previous seasons, with people tuning in from 106 countries. The league also maintains a far-reaching social media presence. In addition to team accounts, the official PWHL Instagram account received over 800 million impressions throughout the 2025-26 season. Many PWHL players maintain personal social media presence as well, drawing fans in 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 bolster the sport. For one, Boston Fleet goalie Aerin Frankel’s Instagram account entirely dedicated to ranking Caesar salads has approximately 65,000 followers.
In addition to virtual accessibility, the PWHL also touts its Takeover Tour, where teams travel across the U.S. and Canada to play games in cities that don’t have franchises. The 2025-26 tour — which spanned 11 cities for 16 games — drew over 200,000 fans from all 50 states and 13 Canadian provinces and territories. The 2026 Winter Olympics built on this exposure. PWHL athletes played on both sides of the riveting U.S.-Canada gold medal match, and the game showcased stars like Seattle Torrent captain Hilary Knight and Boston Fleet captain Megan Keller to an international audience. The broadcast of the gold medal game averaged 5.3 million viewers and peaked at 7.7 million, becoming the most-viewed women’s hockey broadcast ever.
The reach of the Takeover Tour and the Olympics prove that the PWHL isn’t just gunning for success or money, but is establishing 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 a once-in-four-years event that resurfaces every Winter Games. No longer is it merely a dream to play professional hockey for many young women but a real and achievable goal, and it’s obvious — USA Hockey recently reported that program registrations for female athletes at all age levels surpassed 100,000 for the first time.
Women’s hockey is growing on the heels of the PWHL’s early success, and that momentum has shown no signs of slowing down. No longer will female athletes be sidelined and underappreciated — they will be able to pursue hockey as a legitimate career, something that once seemed out of the question. The growth of the sport signals to the general public that when 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.
