Are all NWSL players seeing the money from the league’s new media deal?

With the NWSL pre-season now well underway, the players appear to have won the off-season with record-breaking contracts grabbing headlines over the past several weeks.

First it was Mexican forward María Sánchez re-signing with the Houston Dash for almost a combined $1.5 million over three years plus a mutual option for a fourth season, a contract which surpassed Washington Freedom forward Trinity Rodman’s four-year $1.1 million deal signed in 2022.

Then it was U.S. Women’s National Team forward Mal Swanson re-signing with the Chicago Red Stars for $2 million over four years plus a fifth-year option.

And most recently, it was Zambian forward Racheal Kundananji leaving Spain’s Madrid CFF for Bay FC and a four-year deal with a fifth-year option reportedly worth over $2 million total with a global women’s record €735,000 transfer fee to boot (approximately $788,000 USD).

Is this evidence of the NWSL’s new $240 million four-year media deal trickling down to its players?  Yes.

But is this influx of money reaching all NWSL players and not just the highly sought after names?  I want to believe so but there is a lack of accountability, transparency and foresight that make it difficult to have any faith in this being the case.

Before diving into why I doubt that all NWSL players are seeing the benefits of the league’s new media deal, which is a 40x increase annually over the $1.5 million the NWSL received in 2023 from its media partners, an important note: everything I am about to lay out and question is in adherence with the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) the NWSL and the NWSL Players Association (NWSLPA) ratified prior to the 2022 season.  Both parties agreed to these terms in the first ever CBA struck between the league and its players.  

In this first ever CBA, the players earned a key victory in winning the right to free agency.  But as with any CBA and especially a first CBA, there are a number of opportunities to improve its terms, especially for the players, when negotiations begin for the next CBA that will go into effect at the start of the 2027 season.

With the NWSL entering a new and potentially exponential stage of growth, here are three factors preventing the monetary benefits of that growth from reaching all NWSL players in a more equitable way under the current CBA that should be reconsidered in the next CBA.

1. A Lack of Accountability

The CBA between the league and its players assumes that there is a salary cap and from there simply states that the league in its sole discretion sets and will communicate the amount of the annual salary cap to the NWSLPA within five days of communicating this information to the NWSL clubs.

Beyond a clear definition of “salary cap” and NWSLPA input into the amount of the salary cap, what else is missing from the CBA?  League and Team accountability to invest in player salaries.

For the 2024 season, the NWSL salary cap per club is set at $2,750,000 with the ability for clubs to exceed this amount by electing to use Allocation Money to offset player salary cap charges.  As the concept of utilizing Allocation Money is a bit complicated and also optional on a club by club basis, I’m going to set it aside and simply focus on the fact that if a club does not utilize Allocation Money, the most it can spend on players during the 2024 season is $2,750,000.

What’s the minimum each NWSL club must spend on player salaries during the 2024 season?  According to the CBA, it’s $832,832 per club as each team must roster a minimum of 22 players at a minimum salary of $37,856 per player during the 2024 season.

So according to the CBA, each NWSL club is allowed to spend anywhere between 30% to 100% of the salary cap per year.  

What’s the problem with this?

The minimum amount each club must spend on player salaries - a.k.a. the floor - is so low at 30% that there is no way to ensure the entire NWSL player pool is benefiting financially from the trickle down effect of the new media deal.

For comparison, every other professional league with a salary cap has a negotiated floor - a % against the salary cap that each team must spend on player salaries in a given year - defined in its CBA.  The floor isn’t left to be a calculation of the minimum salary multiplied by the minimum roster size but rather the minimum is negotiated to set a higher bar for spending on player salaries.  

For comparison, here is the minimum % of the salary cap that must be invested in player salaries during the 2024 or 2023-2024 season for every other U.S. professional league which utilizes a salary cap as negotiated in each respective CBA:

• WNBA: Across the league, at least 93% of the total league salary cap must be spent this season.  Additionally, each team must spend a minimum of 90% of their share of the league-wide minimum spend against the salary cap this season.  (These two criteria together allow for some teams to spend closer to the team floor and other teams to spend closer to the team maximum with the league as a whole still meeting or exceeding the league-wide minimum spend requirement this season.)
• NBA: Each team must spend at least 90% of the salary cap this season.
• MLS: Across the league, at least 95% of the total league salary cap must be spent this season.
• NFL: Across the league for a three-season period (2024-2026), at least 95% of the total league-wide salary cap for those three years must be spent.
• NHL: Each team must spend at least 74% of the salary cap this season.

What happens in each of these leagues if these minimum spends on player salaries are not met?  One way or another, any shortfall amount is reported, verified and ultimately finds its way back to the players - for example as a direct payment to the respective players association to divvy up to the impacted players following the season or by the floor for the next season increasing by the amount of the shortfall in addition to any already negotiated salary cap increase.

Through these types of mechanisms the players associations for other leagues ensure that club owners and their leagues as a whole are investing in salaries for all players, not just the in-demand stars.

2. A Lack of Transparency

So how is your favorite NWSL club investing in player salaries?  Are they nearly maxing out against the salary cap?  Are they being skimpy?  

There is no way to know.

One of the many provisions written into the CBA negotiated by the NWSL and the NWSL Players Association is that player salaries shall not be disclosed to third parties by the NWSL or its teams without the prior, written consent of the NWSLPA.

Sure, the argument can be made that NWSL player salaries are so low that neither the players, club owners or the league themselves want to publicize them.

But without salaries being made public neither the media nor the fans has any idea if a NWSL club is spending 50%, 75%, 90%, etc. of the salary cap.  And this circles back to the first factor, a lack of accountability as neither the media nor fans can hold a NWSL club or the league itself accountable to investing in the players and in the on-field product.

This lack of transparency also hampers NWSL media coverage and fan interest in off-season transactions as key information is not available - for example, how much salary cap space is available for a club to pursue free agents, how much salary cap space a team saves when an option isn’t picked up, how player trades impact the involved clubs’ salary caps, etc.

Player salaries in every other league which has a salary cap are available publicly and media and fans alike can view how teams are operating against and managing the salary cap at sites like:

• Spotrac which offers salary cap tracking across a number of leagues
• Her Hoop Stats for the WNBA
• HoopsHype for the NBA
• Over the Cap for the NFL

But salary cap transparency goes beyond the media and fans.  It also extends to the players themselves.

In the current CBA agreed to by both the NWSL and the NWSL Players Association, there is no provision mandating that the league regularly share its salary cap reports with the Players Association.  This is standard in every other CBA for a league that employs a salary cap.

Yes, the NWSL Players Association has a copy of every contract that one of its members signs with the NWSL, so in theory the NWSLPA should be able to calculate how much each club and the league as a whole is investing in player salaries.  But going back again to how transparency leads to accountability, the league currently does not have to share its own salary cap reports with the Players Association for verification.  

This lack of transparency between the parties engaged in the CBA is key because when it comes to the salary cap, the league’s role is to govern compliance with the cap while it is the Players Association’s role to hold the league and its clubs accountable to actually investing in player salaries for all of its players.  Without transparency, there is no accountability.

3. A Lack of Foresight

To some degree, the NWSL Players Association attempted to foresee the league's new media deal.  

A clause in the current CBA states that if the NWSL becomes profitable in years 3, 4 or 5 of the CBA (2024 is Year 3), up to 10% of the net media / broadcast revenues from any media / broadcast deal that are in place that year will go towards player compensation … with the calculation of the actual percentage of profit sharing being dependent upon enabling the NWSL to still break even.

From there, the plan on how to disperse any profit sharing to the players is left to the NWSLPA’s determination with review and input from the league.  (Why the league gets to weigh in on this and the Players Association doesn’t get to solely determine this makes me go 🤨 but I’m going to leave that for now.)

But the aspect the Players Association did not in my view consider up front was how the possibility of exponential NWSL revenue growth should be applied across all players.

For example, the current CBA calls for a 4% increase in the league’s minimum salary for each year of the deal.  Meanwhile, there is no negotiated maximum salary.  Instead for each year of the CBA, the league in its sole discretion sets the team salary cap and the maximum individual player salary cap charge ($200k in 2023 with 2024’s number still to be announced), which can be exceeded in terms of actually paying the player a salary through the use of Allocation Money (until Allocation Money is retired at the conclusion of the 2026 season).  

This framework is now allowing the gap between the minimum player salary, mandated by the CBA to increase by 4% a year, and the highest player salary, set in accordance with current marketplace conditions (i.e. the new media deal that was just struck), to rapidly increase.

The question is - is this what the NWSLPA wants?  Allowing player salaries to see significant growth on the high end of the pay spectrum will keep the NWSL competitive on the global player market but this could have a ripple effect in terms of keeping NWSL player salaries depressed on the lower end of the pay spectrum.

What would it look like for the Players to more equitably distribute the NWSL’s financial gains across the entire player pool?  One option is to tie the minimum player salary to the percentage growth in the annual team salary cap.  Here are two scenarios for how that could have played out over the past two seasons.

Yes, if you’re the Players, you would want to bake in some protection in case the Team Salary Cap growth is minimal in any given year - for example, the minimum player salary should increase year over year (YoY) by the greater of 4% or by a quarter of the rate of the annual Team Salary Cap increase.

It is also difficult to determine how actually implementing either of these scenarios would impact salaries at the high end of the pay spectrum, especially with the NWSL currently utilizing Allocation Money which allows for the salary cap to be subverted.  (There is an interesting contrast in how salary equity vs market dynamics are considered in the NWSL CBA as opposed to the WNBA CBA that I plan to explore in a future post.)

Still, the question of how to address salary equity across all NWSL players is one the Players Association should be considering as it prepares for its next CBA negotiations, especially as the next CBA is slated to go into effect for the 2027 season, a year before the next NWSL media deal will commence in 2028 and with it another round of potentially significant revenue growth.  

Between accountability, transparency and a growing ability to foresee the economic factors at play, the NWSLPA has a number of levers it can pull to ensure its members are not only seeing more investment in their salaries but also that that investment is distributed in a more equitable way across all players.