Chicago Stars and Sky make the case for equality in a stadium public funding bill hearing
Members of the Chicago Stars and Sky organizations testified Monday in support of a bill amendment to ensure public stadium funding equality.
Chicago Stars President Karen Leetzow wants to further the conversation and education about equity in women’s sports.
As the Stars navigate building a training center and venue, Leetzow and other key figures within the Chicago women’s soccer and basketball scene finally had an opportunity to address equality in public funding to Illinois state representatives.
Leetzow was among members of the Stars and Chicago Sky organizations, the National Women’s Soccer League and organized labor representatives to give testimony Monday to the Illinois House of Representatives Revenue & Finance Committee in favor of passing House Bill 5841.
The amendment would ensure some Illinois Sports Facilities Authority bonds are either used or set aside for funding women’s sports whenever men’s sports are funded.
“When we talk about professional women’s sports teams, we don’t always think about the history of how those women’s sports teams have had to claw and fight to get to the point where they are today,” said Democratic Rep. Eva-Dina Delgado of Chicago, the sponsor of the colloquially named “equity amendment.”
“And let’s be honest, right now they’re killing it.”
Asked whether the hearing indicated possible movement on stadium negotiations for the Bears and White Sox, committee chair Kelly Burke of Evergreen Park acknowledged that stadiums for men’s teams have been “bantered about” recently but said Monday’s event was an opportunity to have a forum about women’s sports funding “not wrapped up in specific proposals.”
Bears leadership has struggled to gain vocal support for a new stadium from the General Assembly and Gov. JB Pritzker, though Mayor Brandon Johnson has stood up for a proposal to build a stadium on Chicago’s lakefront.
The Arlington Heights Village Board last week signed off on a property tax agreement with the Bears, though team officials maintain they’re focused on building in Chicago.
Leetzow noted that public funding rarely is granted for women’s stadium projects; instead those teams are told to share venues with men’s teams.
“There’s no real understanding of what that actually translates into, and it translates into us being second and third tenants,” Leetzow told the Tribune. “But also less good working conditions for women because they’re having to wait their turn. They can’t train at optimal times for their bodies.
“We’re really trying to educate people on why it’s so important that women have facilities of their own or at least in the facilities that they’re sharing, they have some level of agency where they can help drive the schedule.”
Those shared spaces have affected NWSL teams that coexist in stadiums with Major League Soccer teams. Three months from the start of the NWSL season, the league has not been able to start working on 2025 schedules because it must wait for MLS to set its schedules first.
“It has downstream consequences,” Leetzow said. “You can’t go to your broadcaster and tell them, ‘We need you to hold these broadcast times’ so that we can have eyeballs in our sport, which drives viewership, which drives fandom, which drives revenue. It can’t happen until the schedule is done, and so it’s just a cascading set of consequences. It keeps pushing women’s sports further behind.”
The ISFA holds hundreds of millions of dollars in debt related to the decades-ago construction of the White Sox’s Guaranteed Rate Field and the renovation of Soldier Field. The Bears’ lakefront stadium proposal from this spring called for the ISFA to issue $900 million in bonds, among other multimillion-dollar asks.
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Stars players Alyssa Naeher, Ally Schlegel and Sam Staab, NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman, Sky forward Elizabeth Williams and Sky co-owner and operating chair Nadia Rawlinson were among those who testified Monday in the downtown hearing room, where female attendees outnumbered men about 3 to 1.
Naeher has been part of the U.S. Women’s National Team’s 15-year fight to achieve equal pay, and since 2020 she has been an NWSL player representative. She has witnessed firsthand how the lack of facilities and resources at a team level can affect players’ ability to be at their best.
“Part of what is so incredible with professional sports and what we are able to do on a daily basis is that community, that culture that we can build,” Naeher said, “and not having facilities, not having space together, not having space that we enjoy as a team with coaches and staff really limits what we’re able to do in terms of building culture and continuing to be the best at what we do and want to accomplish as a team.
“Chicago has such a rich history of sports in this city, and we as the Chicago Stars want to be a part of that.”
Schlegel highlighted realities the Stars have faced: going on the road for 11 days because they couldn’t have access to their practice field due to a music festival, needing to share two hotel rooms between 25 women to change for practice because they couldn’t access their facility and even being forced out of the training room every other week into a different, already limited, space.
“These challenges are not merely logistical,” Schlegel said. “It sends a message that women’s sports are secondary. The ‘equity amendment’ is an opportunity to change that narrative. The next generation is watching us, and they’re looking at us to decide whether we will continue to perpetuate these inequities of the past or create this new path.”
While the Stars are willing to “talk to anybody about anything,” Leetzow said during the 90-minute-plus hearing that conversations with men’s teams often “revolve around how we can fit into their plans, versus what we need.”
A key issue is teams being “tenants” rather than the primary occupants in stadiums, meaning women’s teams often don’t have agency in crafting their schedules, witnesses at the hearing said.
Challenges in facilities and scheduling send a message that women’s sports aren’t equally valued, Schlegel said.
“I want to help build the sports culture for women that I’ve admired so deeply in men’s sports,” she said.
In discussions primarily about stadiums for men’s teams, Pritzker and some state representatives have expressed reluctance to use such vast amounts of public funding to support private teams. But the governor also has brought up the Stars and women’s sports when asked about the possibility of a new Bears stadium.
On Monday, advocates sought to frame women’s sports as different because they’ve historically been underinvested.
“I respectfully submit that we have done something that male professional athletes have not had to do, which is succeed despite investment, not because of it,” said Meghann Burke, executive director of the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association.
Monday’s gathering was a continuation of conversations with the Stars and legislators throughout the year, though being granted a hearing felt like an important step forward, Leetzow said. But progress sometimes can be slow, and the Stars have stadium decisions looming.
Their lease with SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview ends in December 2025. They could opt to extend a short-term lease as they evaluate their options. Even if the Stars find somewhere within the city to build a training facility and venue in the immediate future, it would not be ready for the 2026 season.
These are the short- and long-term decisions the Stars are weighing. For now, their singular focus is on finding an adequate training facility that wouldn’t require them to share the space with, say, a rugby team that would tear up the grass. The Stars are looking for a place in the Chicago area where they would have access and agency over grass fields and could train at times they can dictate rather than working around someone else’s schedule.
“We need to find a place to play,” Leetzow said. “Ultimately, Bridgeview is not going to be a long-term solution. Whether it’s a stadium of our own or moving somewhere else, we’ve got to figure it out. Our players spend most of their time not playing a game but training, and so the training facilities have to improve.
“We’re not going to do something that’s not right for the players, but that’s what we’re looking at is trying to drive toward change in ’25.”
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