The 2025 NWSL season officially gets underway on Friday with the Challenge Cup, this year featuring 2024’s best teams – the Orlando Pride and the Washington Spirit.
The Pride return to play after a record-breaking 2024 season in which the team won their first-ever trophies, winning both the NWSL Championship and the NWSL Shield. The Spirit, meanwhile, landed in second place in both categories last year but both sides have a chance to start fresh with the Challenge Cup – and collect their first piece of silverware of the new season.
Here’s what you need to know before tuning in.
How to watch and odds
- Date: Friday, March 7 | Time: 8 p.m. ET
- Location: Inter&Co Stadium — Orlando, Fla.
- Live stream: Amazon Prime Video
- Odds: Orlando Pride +130; Draw +230; Washington Spirit +200
What is the NWSL Challenge Cup?
In its current iteration, the NWSL Challenge Cup is a game between the most recent winners of the NWSL Championship and Shield. Since the Pride won both last year, the 2025 edition will be a rematch of last season’s championship, which the Washington Spirit competed in.
The Challenge Cup was launched in 2020 as a return-to-play solution in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021 and 2022, it was a tournament that took…
