National Women’s Soccer League scraps draft in historic new deal

Late last summer, women’s soccer in the United States was at a turning point. The country’s illustrious national team had just suffered its worst result ever at a World Cup, the clearest sign yet that its reign of unparalleled dominance was over. New powers had emerged–chief among them Spain, last year’s World Cup winners, and England, the Euro 2022 champions. Both countries had become epicenters of the sport, boasting domestic leagues that produced and attracted some of the world’s best women’s soccer players.

None of this has gone unnoticed by the leaders of the National Women’s Soccer League, the organization where most of the U.S. women’s national team works. Last August, the league invited the NWSL Players Association, the labor union that represents its players, to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement. The two sides had agreed to a contract the previous year that wasn’t set to expire until 2026, but the World Cup’s results have fueled the desire for a new deal.

“What we learned from the World Cup is that there is a global talent pool that we want to attract and engage,” the NWSL commissioner said. Who is Jessica Berman? “It serves as a mandatory function for us to look in the mirror and decide what artificial obstacles and barriers exist in our system in the NWSL that make it harder for us to attract top talent.”

Meghann Burke, The United States national team’s early exit from the tournament has caused “an existential crisis in the American soccer system,” said the executive director of the NWSL Players Association.

“I think, after the World Cup, the league realized, Hey, there’s something to this. The world is passing us by. The window of opportunity for us to maintain our competitive advantage is closing, and we need to act quickly,” Burke said. “We don’t have time to wait until the current collective bargaining agreement ends to make a really significant, transformative change.”

After holding their first negotiating session last September, the league and union spent the next 10 months engaged in secret negotiations. Those efforts culminated in a new contract, formalized at a meeting in Philadelphia last month and announced Thursday morning, that would usher in a series of landmark reforms. Under the new CBA, which runs through 2030, the NWSL would become the first major American professional sports league to eliminate its draft, giving players the right to choose which teams they join. The deal would also prohibit trades without player consent, guarantee every contract and ensure that all players become free agents when their contracts expire, eliminating the five-year service requirement to achieve free agent status.

“These are big changes in the American sports landscape,” Burke said.

The new CBA addresses workload management, requiring teams to charter flights for some midweek games and establishing a midseason break for players. It also creates a new compensation structure by linking shareable revenue from league sponsorships and media rights deals to the salary cap, with teams required to adhere to “minimum spending” to ensure that revenue is spent on player salaries. The NWSL Players Association predicts the deal will add $200,000 to $1 million to a team’s salary cap each year it takes effect, raising the cap from its current $2.75 million to $3.3 million next year and $5.1 million in 2030.

The new CBA adds another boost to the NWSL and women’s soccer in the United States. Earlier this month in Paris, the U.S. women’s national team won the Olympic gold medal against Brazil in a match There are 26 outstanding NWSL players. between the two teams. The league plans to expand from 14 teams to 16 by 2026, as club valuations — bolstered by a four-year, $240 million media rights deal signed last fall with ESPN, CBS, Amazon and Scripps — have skyrocketed. Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, last month acquired controlling stake At Angel City FC, the club is valued at $250 million, making the Los Angeles-based club the most valuable women’s sports team in the world.

Berman credited the union, saying the league had a “willing and interested partner” in the negotiations. She said the two sides “worked quietly and diligently” from last September until the early morning hours of July 11, when a formal agreement was signed: “I think it’s fair to say, especially looking back, knowing that both sides were quiet, that we were really there and motivated to make the game the best it could be and make our league the best it could be.”

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to achieving that vision is the process of recruiting new players to join the league.

Burke said the NWSL is at a disadvantage compared to other women’s leagues, such as the Super League in England, Liga F in Spain and the Frauen-Bundesliga in Germany, which do not have a draft. “We’re losing players to those leagues,” Burke said. “This is an opportunity to rethink the model so we can compete on a global stage.”