Orlando City SC’s new women’s team, the Orlando Pride, are officially the 10th franchise in the National Women’s Soccer League and they are aiming high. Or at least, they are aiming as high as the Portland Timbers and the Houston Dynamo.

After initially telling reporters that Orlando was aiming for an average attendance “north of 10,000” for Pride matches, club president Phil Rawlins days later hinted that early expectations have already been exceeded by early season ticket sales.

“We set some initial forecasts, but the fact that we’ve gone through over 1,500 season tickets in just a few days shows that our initial projections were probably a bit low,” Rawlins said last week. “We’ve modeled this a lot based on what Portland has done. Portland draws 15,000 fans on average and I don’t see any reason why Orlando can’t draw similar numbers.”

That is the crux of Orlando’s decision to go all in on creating a professional women’s team, news the Guardian first broke last month. The Timbers did it with the Thorns, the Dynamo did it with the Dash and now Orlando is working off their blueprints.

Orlando’s projections for attendance, ticket prices, staffing levels – all the things that make up their Pride expenditures and revenues – have been informed by the Major League Soccer clubs that came before, and both the Timbers and the Dynamo have been more than willing to help. Timbers executives had been advising Orlando before they joined MLS this year as an expansion team. Dynamo president Chris Canetti first met with Rawlins in March to go into NWSL details.

“I was able to share with them our numbers, where we made mistakes, the challenges, things we would do differently from the start, and the benefits that go beyond looking at a balance sheet,” Canetti told the Guardian. “We find a lot of value in having the Dash here in many different ways beyond pure economics.”

The economics, however, are certainly in the favor of MLS clubs taking a chance on the NWSL over independent ownership groups. In both Portland and Houston, nearly all of their staff that existed to support their MLS brand – roughly 90 employees in Portland and 100 in Houston – support their NWSL brand, too. A few dedicated positions exist now for each women’s club, but Portland and Houston planned to rely only on existing front office staff to get started.

The MLS-backed clubs have a built-in fan base they can sell to, as well. Rawlins hinted Orlando is working with an expectation of about 25% crossover from Pride season ticket holders to Orlando City, which would fall somewhere between Portland and Houston. One third of Thorns season-ticket holders are also Timbers season-ticket holders. For the Dash, the overlap is much smaller, but evidence suggests fans attending Dash matches on a single-game basis are ones regularly attending Dynamo games.

Those pieces – along with owning a turn-key venue, like the $155m stadium Orlando will have finished constructing next year – give MLS clubs the advantage in operating a women’s team with the potential to become profitable. The Thorns were profitable within their first year.

“Like a lot of businesses, it’s scalable,” said Mike Golub, president of business operations for the Timbers. “You have a number of fixed costs – your facility and your staff – so if you can grow your fan base and your sponsorship base, then you have real chance of making it.”

Part of that was taking the women’s club seriously, something the Timbers did from the start. The Thorns spent resources acquiring top talent like 2013 Fifa Player of the Year Nadine Angerer and sending the team to preseason camps in Arizona, something commonly done in MLS but not in NWSL. The sign above the entrance of Providence Park features two logos, with the Thorns featured with the same prominence as the Timbers.

“One of the things I’ve stressed to Orlando to think about, and I think they have, is that when we were entering the NWSL, we wanted the Thorns to be embraced and treated with the same enthusiasm, resources and as culturally important as the men’s side,” Golub told the Guardian. “The people who work here love the Thorns just as much as the Timbers and that manifests itself at the games.”

Orlando has started in that direction. They hired former US women’s national team coach Tom Sermanni and aggressively pursued Alex Morgan, arguably the most marketable female soccer player in the world, as their first signing, along with Canadian international Kaylyn Kyle and US national team pool player Sarah Hagen. Rawlins said the Pride will stand alongside Orlando City on equal footing.

Tim Holt, Orlando’s vice president of development, said Houston and Portland don’t share the same exact business models, but they both have components Orlando is seeking to emulate. If Orlando can succeed in the NWSL, it’s likely MLS interest will continue to increase, but the markets in line are less like Portland – and perhaps even Orlando – than they are like Houston.

Multiple MLS franchises have expressed interest in joining the NWSL for 2017. Real Salt Lake and the San Jose Earthquakes are two ownership groups that have been public about it.

“A lot of people have their eyes on Houston to see how it’s working here,” Canetti said. “It’s not necessarily realistic to look at Portland and say, ‘Well, they can do that, so we can do that.’ How the Houston Dash perform is probably more symbolic of what will happen in other MLS cities.”

For Orlando – at least right now – it seems the sky is the limit. Orlando City has the second-highest average MLS attendance in just their first season. Their fan response has looked not unlike Portland, a market that also only has an NBA team competing on the professional level. Rawlins said he’d like to see the Pride set an NWSL crowd-size record in their home opener.

All eyes will certainly remain on Portland and Houston, but now, it is Orlando’s turn to show that women’s professional soccer can be good business.

Transfer wire

Rosters in the NWSL are now frozen in anticipation the 2 November expansion draft, where Orlando will be able to select up to 10 players from teams around the league. But the draft itself is the catalyst for a flurry of trades that occurred last week before the roster freeze began.

Acquiring Morgan and Kyle from Portland didn’t come cheap for Orlando. They forfeited the No1 overall 2016 college draft pick and their top draft pick the next year. They also gave Portland one of their three international slots for two years and a pick from their expansion draft.

Megan Klingenberg was traded from Houston to the Seattle Reign, but her final destination is Portland. Reign coach Laura Harvey shrewdly acquired Klingenberg in exchange for Amber Brooks to essentially use Klingenberg as a shield in the expansion draft. Klingenberg will be left unprotected and taken by Orlando to give to Portland as part of the Morgan trade, leaving Harvey’s Seattle roster intact.

All signs point to Washington Spirit goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris being selected in the expansion draft and returning to her hometown Orlando. Harris has been making a steady stream of appearances at Orlando City events in recent weeks, and her name appearing on the unprotected list for the draft seemed to confirm the widespread speculation. When Rawlins was asked about her last week, his response amounted to a wink and a nod.

Portland sent Sinead Farrelly and McCall Zerboni to the Boston Breakers. In return, Portland got draft picks and Dagny Brynjarsdottir, an Icelandic midfielder from Bayern Munich, in a sign-and-trade transaction.

Sources tell the Guardian that Thorns midfielder Lianne Sanderson is expected to most likely be picked up by Orlando too, clearing the way for an international signing that is still in the works.

Brittany Bock was the only waived player to be picked up by another club and will join the Chicago Red Stars. The Dash midfielder had been plagued with frequent injuries, appearing in just five games last season. She tore her ACL in the Dash’s inaugural match and missed the rest of the 2014 season.

Quick kicks