With two NWSL clubs still currently for sale, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said on Friday that the teams — the Portland Thorns and OL Reign — maintain its votes in the NWSL Board of Governors while in the midst of its respective sale processes.
“Until a team is sold, the incumbent ownership group, of course, retains all rights and obligations on behalf of their franchise. So from a governance perspective, the expectation is that they will continue to operate in the ordinary course of business. So it’s really business as usual, from the Reign perspective,” Berman said. “From a Portland perspective, obviously that situation is unique because we carry forward the aftermath of Merritt (Paulson) having stepped off the Board of Governors, and that continues to be true.”
On Friday’s media call ahead of the NWSL Challenge Cup final, Berman declined to name Portland’s representative on the board: “I actually don’t know if I’m permitted to share who represents teams on our board, so I’m going to decline to answer.”
Currently, the club’s CEO Heather Davis holds one of the team’s seats, according to multiple league sources with knowledge of the board’s makeup. Each NWSL club can have two representatives, a governor and an alternate, but an alternate is…
