Kristen Edmonds #12 of NJ/NY Gotham FC raises the NWSL Championship trophy after defeating the OL Reign during the 2023 NWSL Championship game at Snapdragon Stadium on November 11, 2023 in San Diego, California.
The National Women's Soccer League and its players have signed a new collective bargaining agreement that raises players' minimum salaries and eliminates the draft — making the NWSL the first professional sports league in the U.S. to grant unrestricted free agency to all players.
Instead, newcomers to the league will get to choose from among their preferred teams and negotiate a deal. The new agreement, announced on Thursday, extends the current contract with the NWSL Players Association to 2030.
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The NWSL was on hiatus for the 2024 Paris Olympics, resuming its regular season on Friday, Aug. 23. A record 56 NWSL athletes competed in the Games, including 19 players on the U.S. women's national soccer team, which won gold.
In an interview with CNBC, NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman said she felt that giving players additional agency could help attract athletes from other countries to the league. European soccer leagues in England, Spain and Italy, for example, don't have drafts.
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"If we want to attract, retain and develop the best players in the world, we believe that we will be most strongly positioned if we remove that artificial barrier and put ourselves on an even playing field with the rest of the world," Berman, who was featured in 2024's CNBC Changemakers list, said.
The deal also increases the minimum salary for players from $48,500 in 2025 to $82,500 by 2030.
That number still leaves some players earning less than their counterparts in men's leagues. The salary minimum for reserve players in Major League Soccer (MLS) is $71,401, and the minimum for senior players is $89,716.
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'We want them to have skin in the game'
Other player benefits outlined in the contract — including paid mental health leave and a supplemental housing stipend — help bridge the gap, Meghann Burke, the executive director of the NWSLPA, tells CNBC Make It.
"MLS is not our benchmark, as these transformative provisions around free agency demonstrate," she says. "This second contract in NWSL history is both groundbreaking and a reflection of where we are right now."
For MLS teams, the base salary cap – or the pool of money designated for each team – is nearly $5.5 million, but a 2007 amendment allows teams to spend limitless amounts on three players.
Inter Miami star Lionel Messi, for example, is paid close to $20 million a year, not including endorsements, the MLS Players Association reports.
By comparison, the new CBA raises the base salary cap for women's teams from $3.3 million in 2025 to $5.1 million in 2030. Individual players will have no limit on their maximum annual salary within the team cap.
Players' salaries will also be supplemented by the league's new revenue-sharing model, which will add additional funds generated from the league's prior year media and sponsorship agreements to each team's salary cap.
Attendance at NWSL games is up 42% year-over-year while viewership is up 95% from the 2023 season, the league reports. And in November, the NWSL inked a media deal worth $240 million over four years – 40 times higher than the previous agreement.
"We want [players] to have skin in the game," Berman told CNBC. "We want them to know that they, too, will benefit from that growth."
Other contract wins for players in the NWSL include guaranteed contracts, no trades without a player's consent, ensuring an offseason of at least 28 days and expanded parental leave and child-care benefits.
"As we think about building a league that is purpose-built for women, there are considerations that we think about that are different from the men," Berman added. "We have moms in our league, we have players who want to be moms and don't want to have to choose between playing and being a mom."
She continued: "Those are real-life conversations that happen in the corporate world, and they should be real-life conversations that we're having in the sports world."
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