NWSL signs new CBA with players’ union

The deal, announced Thursday, includes two trademark provisions that set the upstart league apart from the rest of American sports. First, it will eliminate the draft, allowing newcomers to the league to choose which team they sign for. Second, it will lift any limits on the winning potential of individual players.

The NWSL decided to do so after a bout of self-reflection, according to its commissioner Jessica Berman.

Berman said that since she was named commissioner in March 2022, she has had numerous conversations with the board about whether the NWSL should emulate American sports leagues such as the NBA, NFL and NHL, or soccer leagues in other countries. “There’s friction between those two worlds,” Berman said wealth. “The sport of soccer is a global game, we operate our business in the US.”

In the end, the NWSL decided to split the difference, doing away with the draft entirely but keeping American-style salary caps, albeit with a twist. Under the new agreement, teams will have a fixed salary cap, however, they can spend it with far fewer restrictions than other American sports. Namely, teams will be able to pay a star player however much they want as long as they stay under the salary cap. Players also cannot be traded without their consent, as is currently the standard in other major sports leagues.

“There is tremendous power in players having autonomy and control over their careers,” NWSL Players Association executive director Meghann Burke said in an interview Wednesday night.

Under the new agreement, the salary cap for NWSL teams increased to $3.3 million, up from $2.75 million in the previous agreement signed in 2022. The minimum salary increased from $35,000 to $48,500, an increase of 38 .5%. By the end of the deal in 2030, the salary cap is projected to rise to $5.1 million and the minimum salary to $82,500.

These new changes were an effort to adapt the league to the global realities of soccer, the world’s most popular sport, according to Berman. “Football is one of the few sports where there is truly a global labor market for talent,” she said.

In virtually all US sports, both men’s and women’s, the draft is considered a rite of passage that marks the moment an amateur player turns professional. But in the rest of the world it is often seen as an American quirk, one that often prevents a player from choosing where to ply their trade.

“I’ve bought into this paradigm of sports that I don’t think a lot of American sports fans really understand, until they think about it, that the rest of the world doesn’t,” said Burke, who was a professional player before to earn his J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law.

Over the last couple of years, the NWSL has been at the center of a good investment in women’s sports. Earlier this year, the league added two new teams and attracted a slew of high-profile investors. Disney CEO Bob Iger has bought a majority stake in Los Angeles-based Angel City FC. The league has also managed to attract institutional investors. In April 2023, the private equity firm Sixth Street Partners, known for its major sports investments, bought NWSL team San Francisco Bay FC.

But as the NWSL’s fortunes have risen, so have those of other women’s leagues. Like in the US, women’s soccer in Europe has experienced a financial boom in recent years. In England (which is also home to the most profitable men’s league), revenue for the Women’s Super League increased by 50% in the 2023-2024 season. In March 2022, the Women’s Champions League, the continent’s premier competition, between Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona set an attendance record of over 93,000 fans.

The need to act became even more apparent after the 2023 Women’s World Cup, where the U.S. was eliminated in the first round, Burke said. She said she realized it was “undoubtedly true” that “the world is passing us by”.

After that disappointment, USA and the NWSL realized they needed to adapt to regain their perch at the top of the soccer world. “We are competing for the best talent in the world in the global market, and so it made no sense to play by one set of rules, while all our competitors in England and Spain and France and Germany and Mexico play by federal rules different. , especially when those rules give them an advantage,” Burke said.

In addition to the draft, preventing that global talent from being recruited was a practice known as years of service, which dictated how long a player had to be in the league before being eligible for free agency. The rule made it harder for players to move between teams when their contracts expired. Usually, the most sought-after players are eager to enter free agency because it opens up a bidding war for their services among teams looking to sign them. Over the past year, free agency has been a contentious topic between the NWSL and the players’ union, ending up in an arbitration dispute several times.

The new CBA allows all NWSL players to enter free agency whenever their current contract expires without having to accrue years of service. The contract still maintains the salary cap, long used as a way to encourage parity between teams in American sports, which Berman cited. However, teams can allocate this between individual players as they see fit.

Berman said he hoped the new policy would give the team more flexibility in how they built their rosters. “It will be up to the team if they want to fill their roster with a minimum of 21 and sign a big player or work it out so they are more prescriptive about different positions,” she said.

The moment of understanding was also notable for a collective agreement. It came about two and a half years before the current deal expires at the end of the 2026 season. According to Burke, in order to reopen negotiations, especially at such an early date, the NWSLPA had a clear request: that the league adopt the same policies as and the rest of the football world. “That was the Rubicon they had to cross for us to consider renegotiating a new CBA,” she said.