Former San Diego Wave president Jill Ellis is back in the headlines, with the NWSL club's owners — private equity billionaire couple Lauren Leichtman and Arthur Levine — filing a lawsuit against Ellis on Monday for allegedly promising to stay on after the team's 2024 sale, only to resign days later in order to accept a new job as FIFA's Chief Football Officer.
According to the lawsuit, Ellis leveraged her longstanding friendship with Leichtman and Levine to convince them to purchase the San Diego Wave at a then-record price of $120 million, with the Levine Leichtman Family Office calling Ellis "a very attractive asset" that helped push the deal — and its nine-figure sticker price — across the line.
Though Ellis and other negotiators allegedly assured Leichtman and Levine that she would helm the NWSL club "for many years to come," Ellis resigned just two days after the sale closed, reportedly telling the new owners that she had "no intention of continuing any involvement with Wave FC."
Monday's court filing claims that Ellis and other unnamed defendants committed intentional misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, concealment, and false promise, and requests damages as Ellis's departure allegedly resulted in an estimated $40 million in lost revenue.
Ellis's attorney deemed the suit "meritless," calling it retaliation for the former USWNT manager's ongoing pursuit of $1.2 million in deferred payments reportedly guaranteed by her original contract with the San Diego Wave.
As for the team, the NWSL club is staying out of it, releasing a statement saying, "This is a legal matter between the Levine Leichtman Family Office and Jill Ellis. San Diego Wave FC is not a party to this lawsuit."
Wisconsin volleyball is off to the attendance races, with the No. 7 college squad averaging 8,620 fans per match this season to become this NCAA's best-attended program — narrowly beating Big Ten rival No. 1 Nebraska's 8,602 current average.
Other than the Badgers and Cornhuskers, no other college volleyball team has surpassed 6,000 fans per match this year, but Wisconsin is well on track to surpass even their own dominant attendance history in the sport.
If they finish the season in the top attendance spot, the Badgers will snap a six season streak logging the second-best average crowds per year.
Even more, Wisconsin is on their way to blasting through their program-best mark, set when 7,761 fans per match filled the bleachers in 2022.
The growing demand for Badger volleyball is also translating into significant revenue boosts for school.
"We're really, really excited; we're going to exceed $2 million in volleyball ticket sales for the first time ever," Wisconsin deputy athletic director Mitchell Pinta told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this week. "And we're largely sold out for the rest of our matches at the Field House for the remainder of the season."
Should the Badgers reach that $2 million mark, they will see a massive 25% increase over the $1.6 million the team garnered just two seasons ago, and a near 18-fold growth from the $111,809 in volleyball ticket sales that Wisconsin logged in 2013.
Ultimately, the sky's the limit for both Wisconsin volleyball — and the sport at-large.
"If there's a saturation point on the demand for Wisconsin volleyball, we certainly have not seen it yet," said Pinta.
How to watch Wisconsin volleyball in action
With conference play kicking off this weekend, No. 7 Wisconsin will host unranked Big Ten foe Rutgers at 8 PM ET on Friday, before paying a visit to also-unranked Iowa at 3 PM ET on Sunday.
Both Big Ten battles will stream live on B1G+.
Unrivaled 3×3 Basketball is ahead of the game in preparing for its second season, with co-founder Alex Bazzell telling Front Office Sports on Saturday that the offseason league has already signed upwards of 90% of its 2026 roster.
"We have a few spots left open to fill and then we're pretty much ready to go," Bazzell confirmed.
While Unrivaled won't stray from its six-team format, the 2026 overall pool will expand from 36 to 42 players, with the six new slots comprising a developmental pool meant to subsidize rosters in case of injury — an issue the league struggled to manage during its 2025 inaugural campaign.
Unrivaled is also looking to boost athlete pay above the reported $220,000 average earned by players in the 3x3 league's two-month 2025 season, far outpacing the WNBA's $147,745 average — for a season three times as long as Unrivaled's — all in a year when tense CBA negotiations continue to make headlines.
"The numbers are going up because the business outperformed every metric that we had," Bazzell explained. "It's part of our business model that we built from the ground up, which is that as the business continues to drive more revenue, [we're going to funnel it] back into the players."
The Golden State Valkyries made a splash on Tuesday, as the 2025 expansion side debuted on Sportico's annual WNBA valuation list at the very top, leading all 13 league teams at $500 million.
With facility ownership and arena management playing major roles, that current estimate of the Valkyries' worth is 10 times the amount that the Golden State ownership group paid in expansion fees back in 2023.
Even more, the figure arguably puts Golden State atop all other women's sport teams worldwide, surpassing even the record-breaking $450 valuation set by the New York Liberty just last month. On Sportico's current list, the Liberty clock in with a $420 million value just behind the Valkyries.
The Sportico report also places the overall average value of a WNBA team at $269 million, a 180% increase over last season's average — and a figure that dwarfs even the $140 million valuation held by 2024 list-leaders Las Vegas.
Of all teams, the Fever saw the biggest leap, rising from sixth to third on the list with a valuation of $355 million — more than 270% higher than Indiana's $90 million mark in 2024.
Valkyries poised to win the 2025 WNBA revenue race
The Fever also led the league in revenue last year with $33.8 million, though the Valkyries are projected to run away with this season's revenue title, as Sportico estimates that Golden State will bring in more than $70 million in 2025.
The Bay Area side already set a single-game WNBA record for revenue generated, making $3 million in their 2025 home opener.
Current calculations put WNBA valuations at an average of 12 times their revenue — the highest revenue multiple among all major pro sports leagues, including the NBA (11.9), MLS (9.4), NFL (9.3), NHL (7.7), NWSL (6.8), and MLB (6.6).
Plus, new media deals with broadcasters like ESPN, NBC, and Amazon Prime — among others — are on track to generate an average of $260 million in annual revenue for the league starting next season.
With Golden State proving that expansion can be immediately profitable, business — and valuations — continues to boom in the WNBA, as the league eyes even more value with the 2026 additions of Toronto and Portland.
FIFA is setting a new goal for the Women's World Cup, with organization president Gianni Infantino stating this week that the governing body is aiming to generate $1 billion in revenue from the international championship tournament.
"Women's football and women in football are crucially important," Infantino said at the 2025 Saudi Arabia/US Investment Forum in Riyadh on Tuesday.
"It's growing as well, and exponentially, and we are targeting [growth] as well to have $1 billion revenue just with the Women's World Cup to reinvest in the women's game."
The public push to hit the billion-dollar mark comes after the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand became the first edition of the tournament to break even, generating a revenue total over $570 million.
The 2027 World Cup will take place in Brazil, becoming the first iteration ever held in South America, while the US — as the only bid on the table — has a near-guaranteed lock on hosting the 2031 edition.
As FIFA takes aim at its $1 billion target for the 2027 tournament, the 2031 World Cup could have a leg up in the revenue game, with FIFA expanding the competition's field from 32 to 48 teams just last week.
Consequently, that 16-team increase boosts the total matches from 64 in 2027 to 104 in the 2031, instantly creating 62.5% more inventory — a move that could help meet or potentially exceed FIFA's bold new revenue goal.