RALEIGH — The North Carolina Courage sold out consecutive games for the first time in club history this month, attracting more than 10,000 fans to First Horizon Stadium for games on May 2 and May 16.

Those over-capacity crowds are more evidence, a team official said, of something the franchise has been arguing for a while now: The club needs a new stadium to replace its current venue at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary.

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“We’ve outgrown it,” club president Francie Gottsegen said Thursday.

“Francie needs a new stadium. That’s the answer,” said Michael Goodmon, an executive vice president at Capitol Broadcasting. Capitol Broadcasting, which owns WRAL, is an investor in the Courage.

Gottsegen and Goodmon were among the panelists at a leadership summit on the Future of Women’s Pro Sports in the Triangle held Thursday at Lenovo Center. The Carolina Blaze, a franchise in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, begin play this summer in Durham, joining the Courage as professional women’s sports teams in the Triangle.

The Courage’s 10,000-fan capacity is below the NWSL’s average attendance, and as other franchises have invested in their facilities the Courage’s home stadium has fallen behind. Courage owner Steve Malik said previously the large crowds — including more than 11,000 for its regular-season finale in November — are too much for the stadium to handle and effectively serve fans.

“We’re not sustainable with the current stadium that we have,” Gottsegen said. “And so we, as has been publicly stated many times before, we’re making a big push to secure public funding to secure a new stadium. We’ve made good progress. We’re optimistic, but we don’t have anything specific to share.”

The push for a new venue is not new. In 2019, Malik and real estate developer John Kane proposed a 20,000-seat open air stadium as part of a $2-billion entertainment district development plan known as Downtown South. It has never been built, but Malik hasn’t given up on the idea.

“We’re one of the largest metro areas in the country without any kind of downtown stadium, so it does make a lot of sense,” Malik said last year.

In September, NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman told WRAL in an exclusive interview that the most important building block for success is infrastructure.

“You look at your training facility and you look at your stadium and you ask yourself, is that going to set you up for success?” Berman said.

For the Courage, the answer is a resounding no. It’s a competitive disadvantage in the league, Gottsegen said. The NWSL doesn’t have a draft and players can’t be traded without their consent, putting the onus on franchises to be attractive destinations for players.

“Our training facility and our stadium are below standards,” Gottsegen said. “The league is elevating at a significant and huge trajectory and our stadium and training facility do not meet those standards. From a player recruitment and a player retention perspective, we’re going to be put in a tough spot. Our players see what their friends have. They go to these other facilities.”

When Malik moved the league’s Western New York franchise to North Carolina in 2017, the Courage’s facilities were among the best in the league — and so was the team. North Carolina won three consecutive regular-season titles and back-to-back playoff championships from 2017 to 2019. Since the cancelled 2020 season, the franchise has finished no higher than third in the regular season and hasn’t advanced past the quarterfinals of the postseason.

The Courage, in their first season under new coach Mak Lind, have three wins, three losses and three draws in their first nine games. The team is averaging 8,448 fans per game through five home games.

Kansas City is the lone NWSL franchise to have a purpose-built stadium, but new clubs in Denver and Boston have franchise-specific stadiums coming.

“How about we invest in women’s sports-specific facilities?” Goodmon said. “The Courage doesn’t need to play in some stadium because there’s a men’s professional team there and the women can play there, too.”