When Steve Malik purchased the New York Flash in 2017 and relocated the soccer franchise to Cary to play as the North Carolina Courage, the stadium and training facilities at WakeMed Soccer Park were top-notch.
Since then, there’s been an explosion of interest in women’s sports, particularly women’s soccer, and with the popularity uptick has come huge investments in all 16 markets in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) across the country.
This year, Denver Summit FC drew a record 63,004 fans to its debut game. The 2025 NWSL Championship drew 1.2 million TV viewers. A 2026 Nielsen report found the league’s sponsor valuation had gone up 82%, higher than the Women’s National Basketball Association and Ladies Professional Golf Association, with expansion fees growing from $2 million in 2021 to $205 million just five years later (two new teams will join the league in 2028).
The Courage, the winningest team in the NWSL and holder of the most trophies, hasn’t been left behind—at least not yet.
Since 2023, average attendance at Courage games has increased by 75%, climbing from an average 4,700 fans per match at WakeMed Soccer Park’s 10,000-seat stadium, that year, to 8,300 in 2026, with the team seeing its first back-to-back sellout games in May, drawing more than 10,000 fans.
But with the growth of soccer and the Courage’s popularity in particular, Malik and Courage stakeholders say the team is in need of updated training facilities and a larger stadium.
The land that’s home to WakeMed Soccer Park is owned by the state of North Carolina and leased to Wake County, which subleases it to the town of Cary. While there doesn’t seem to be any reason for that arrangement not to continue, the lease expires in 2029 and at the very least would need to be renegotiated.
Malik wants to see WakeMed Soccer Park updated to provide competitive training facilities for the team. At the same time, he says, the team needs a new, larger stadium for its matches, potentially at Downtown South in Raleigh. With both projects still up in the air, it’s getting harder for the team to plan beyond its 2028 season. A spokesperson for the town of Cary said the town appreciates its partnership with the Courage but did not make a staff member available for an interview.
As the Courage’s 2026 season winds down, the INDY spoke with Malik last month about the Courage’s future in the region. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
INDY: I was hoping to start by talking broadly about the situation with the Courage’s facilities, the WakeMed Soccer Park. I’m thinking of the Kansas City Current, whose new stadium was privately financed. So there are nicer, newer facilities in other cities in the country. Is that impacting recruitment currently, or do you think it will in the future?
STEVE MALIK: Honestly, it already does—I wouldn’t even say the future. It’s more than just the stadium issue. It’s a little bit of an arms race around training facilities. For instance, you look at Los Angeles [team Angel City FC], they acquired a former NFL facility. So you know, unbelievable. And Bay [FC] is building a brand new center in the middle of an island in the [San Francisco] Bay, and all these new teams are [building new facilities]. And Kansas City, as you mentioned … just [about] every market is investing a lot, and we certainly need to make some decisions to stay competitive. Frankly, we want to be more than competitive. We’ve got more trophies than anyone else in the history of the league, so not being absolutely fantastic is not all right.
Have there been any updates on the status of the land that’s home to WakeMed Soccer Park?
Well, there’s obviously been a little disarray, honestly, with Cary over the last … pick your period, say six months. There were a lot of conversations going on about the future, and we’re still engaged. But obviously, I think that took their attention for a period of time there, and hopefully they’re on the other side of that, and we can continue working on improvements.
As a temporary scenario, we have worked with the town of Cary around additional temporary facilities that we can utilize as the training center. We have some high-end trailers that we use out there, and we continue to work with them on expanding, so while we don’t have a shiny new facility like some of the brand new teams, we’re doing our best with what we have.
So, is the burden on the town of Cary?
The fact that Fenton is now right beside the facility, and by all accounts is a fabulous success, plays into how anybody looks at what the best use for that land around it is—and I see that as a very positive thing.
Just for instance, fans have figured out that there’s a back entrance [into WakeMed Soccer Park] there, we make it super easy. We know the scan points where people come into the facility. By far, that is the largest group now. It used to be the front entrance, but people have figured out Fenton, and when you look at that success, you get ideas around extending that, and dealing with some of the ingress-egress issues.
It does sound like there’s a preference to stay in that facility and update it, rather than find a new location altogether for the team?
We think that location is a great training facility, all the fields. We were a finalist for the U.S. National Team’s training center, and there’s certainly a lot of land and some great fields out there, and with some enhancements, we think it’s a great long-term home for a professional team.
And at the same time, from a stadium perspective, yeah, we need a minimum of 15,000 seats, and our current capacity is 10 [thousand]. We have acquired land at Downtown South, and continue to work with the city and county and others around a long-term plan for a potential facility in downtown Raleigh.
We’re looking at every option out there. But we’ve made a significant investment in Downtown South, and we’d love to see that happen because of all of the ability to leverage mass transit and the significant investment that’s already been made in infrastructure at that exit, [with] what’s happening with Dix Park.
Is there a hangup there at Downtown South? Why is that not the only option for a stadium?
Well, there are several options, but I mean, there’s not really a hangup when you’re working towards a project that big. There’s a lot that needs to go into transit and parks.
We’ve been through a pretty significant zoning process there, and that involved a lot of community engagement, and the public officials making sure that [the] pretty significant investment that’s going in there gets leveraged in a way that gives us the best outcome for our community. I wish those wheels turned a little faster, and you’re right on point that, with the massive increase of attention and investment in women’s sports all over the country and in our league, that we need a solution to keep up—and the clock is ticking.
The good news is our attendance is up massively—60-something percent since 2023—we’re regularly having sellouts, and we feel very supported in the community. Likewise, corporate partnerships are up 100% from ‘23, and we’re getting a lot of support from significant brands in our market. Community engagement is way up.
I think everybody’s familiar with how significant our youth organization is in the community. We’ve made great efforts to reach out through the schools with partnerships there, and other community organizations, and making sure people of every socioeconomic background have access to the facility and to see the team. There’s real positives going on with that market, the growth that we’re having, and the market continues to be better and better. We just need to solve these infrastructure challenges.
But even in the best case scenario, there would probably be a delay between a new stadium being built and the lease expiring in 2029.
Right. There’s an urgency. Kansas City—you brought them up; they built that stadium in 14 months. So when you’re building a 15,000 seat facility, it’s not like SoFi [Stadium] in LA. That’s a $6 billion facility. This is not a 70,000-seat stadium. It’s much more manageable. And while you’re absolutely right, the clock is ticking, and we need to solve it, there’s still a little time left.
I’ve heard this floated, and I wanted to ask your opinion. Is there any danger of the Courage leaving Wake County or North Carolina before the team gets a new stadium and updated training facilities?
I’m from here and my whole reason for doing this was to do something for my community, for women, and for the sport. And we have worked super hard to solve this facility issue, and I’m hopeful that we do. And to answer your question, if we don’t, that’s a very fair point.
When you’re in a league where the owners of the Giants buy the New York team [NY/NJ Gotham FC] and the owners of the Cubs buy the Chicago [Red Stars] team, and we all just saw what happened with the Lakers and the Disney CEO [Bob Iger] owns our Los Angeles team now [Editor’s note: Iger just bought the Lakers and is a controlling owner in NWSL team Angel City FC]. In addition to the Lakers, these folks are making very significant investments.
What is the timeline, then, for having to figure it out?
Well, you just very rightfully pointed out that the Cary situation is going to require—particularly with what happens with building, we start to get into a real challenge in the ‘29 season. So really, I’ll tell you, in the next six months, we need to have very significant progress toward a solution.
Okay, and that mainly looks like the town of Cary figuring out what’s going to happen after 2029?
It does, and at the same time, we don’t have an ask of the town of Cary to put a 15,000-seat solution together. So it’s also what happens with Raleigh in terms of a stadium, and what happens with the current facility, potentially as a training facility.
When you say “What happens with Raleigh,” what do you mean by that?
Our plan A is to get to the public-private partnership that everybody feels great about that allows us to come forward with plans for a 15,000-seat stadium in Downtown South. And that’s what we’re working on.
So can I fairly say that there’s no danger of losing the Courage imminently, but if we don’t get it figured out in the next six months or so, [the team leaving] could be a threat?
You can say that. Yes, I think that’s an accurate statement.
Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.
