New NWSL CBA Furthers Competitive Advantage Over Rival Super League

On August 22, 2024, the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and National Women's Soccer League Players Association (NWSLPA) announced a new collective bargaining agreement. The agreement was shocking in that it was reached two years before expiration of the parties’ current agreement, that there had been no public awareness of the negotiations, and that it eliminated the player draft and provided all players with unrestricted free agency at the expiration of their contracts. In subsequent public comments, both NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman and NWSLPA Executive Director Meghann Burke described the changes as necessary for the NWSL to compete in the global soccer market. Left unsaid was how the agreement can also further the league’s advantage in its inevitable competition with the United Soccer League (USL) Super League.

The NWSL’s Rebound and Upward Trajectory

The NWSL was founded in 2012 with support from U.S. Soccer, the sport’s National Governing Body, and on the feet of the stars from the U.S. Women’s National Team. After occasional instability, the league has settled in and begun to expand in exciting ways.?

In January 2022, the league and its players agreed to their first ever collective bargaining agreement, providing important operational stability and labor peace. The agreement set minimum salaries of $36,400, established free agency for players after five years, and introduced a salary cap.? The NWSL also agreed to provide its players with a variety of benefits, including full salary protection in the event of pregnancy.?

Then, in March 2022, the NWSL made a widely-praised decision in hiring Berman. Berman had been the Deputy Commissioner of the National Lacrosse League and before that had spent 13 years in legal and business roles at the National Hockey League (NHL). Berman has since helped guide the NWSL through a series of past scandals that resulted in five coaches being permanently banned from the league.

Business has otherwise been good. In November 2023, the NWSL announced new media rights agreements with CBS, ESPN, Amazon Prime and Scripps Sports worth $240 million over four years.?The average NWSL club is now worth an estimated $66 million and league revenues are believed to exceed $112 million. Relatedly, ratings, attendance, and sponsorship have all continued to climb. Everything appears to be going to the NWSL’s way.

The USL Wants in On the Action

The USL, however, has other ideas. To understand the USL’s incursion into professional women’s soccer, it is helpful to first take stock of its role in men’s professional soccer.

The USL operates Division II and Division III men’s professional leagues, below the Division I Major League Soccer (MLS), according to the standards set by U.S. Soccer. This structure, however, has undergone regular change. The most recent version of the North American Soccer League played as a Division II league, in competition with the USL, until it folded in 2017. The league responded by suing U.S. Soccer and MLS, alleging a conspiracy to protect MLS, with a? trial coming in January 2025 on those claims. For a few years thereafter, MLS and the USL then had a semi-formal partnership in which a variety of MLS clubs operated USL affiliates as minor league clubs. However, MLS recently launched MLS Next Pro, a Division III league that will compete against the USL for talent and attention. MLS clubs subsequently withdrew their affiliates from the USL leagues.

The USL has been effective in men’s soccer by operating like minor league baseball. The league has started franchises in small and medium sized cities and built modest new stadiums as part of redevelopment and entertainment projects. The soccer clubs are not profitable businesses but the enterprise as a whole is attractive to cities and successful businesspersons who happen to also be soccer fans.

The USL’s women’s league, the Super League, has been more ambitious. It was sanctioned as a Division I women’s league, same as the NWSL. The league started play in August with teams in eight cities.

The New NWSL CBA and Super League Comparison

The new collective bargaining agreement is being described as historic because of the ways in which it deviates from major American sports leagues. For decades, the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, and MLS have utilized player drafts as a process by which the best new players are allocated to clubs. Those drafts were unilaterally imposed at first but later agreed to as part of collective bargaining agreements, which helped to ward off legal challenges by players on antitrust grounds. The drafts are now a long-accepted part of the sports ecosystem.

The NWSL and NWSLPA did away with the player draft, permitting new players to negotiate with multiple clubs in deciding where to start their career. This is generally the process in European soccer leagues and the standard to which the NWSL and NWSLPA want to conform.

The new CBA also eliminates the often-complex rules around free agency. In the other leagues, players do not become free agents until after a certain number of years in the league (six in MLB and four in the NFL for example). Until that time, clubs generally retain a variety of rights with regard to a player when their contract expires, such as the right to offer a minimum contract, match any offers or the right to receive compensation of some kind if another team signs the player. The NWSL and NWSLPA have excised this structure and instead opted for a free labor market.

Next, the parties also agreed that moving forward all player trades would require player consent. In the past, players have expressed surprise and dismay at being traded after planning to remain in a specific city. While star players in some leagues occasionally negotiate for the right to approve trades, the vast majority of players can be traded without their consent. In those leagues, the possibility of being traded is thought fair consideration for salaries in the millions or hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the NWSL, where salaries were an estimated $54,000 on average in 2022, players clearly desire greater control over their lives.

In a 40-minute conversation with Tulane law professor Gabe Feldman on his SportsWise podcast, Burke repeatedly emphasized that the changes were designed to ensure the NWSL’s competitiveness in the global soccer landscape. Berman similarly described the changes as a step in making the NWSL “the best league in the world.”

Yet, the new policies may end up having a bigger impact closer to home. In Burke and Feldman’s conversation, the Super League was only referenced twice in passing. The changes to the NWSL’s operations are nevertheless certain to draw the league’s attention.

The Super League’s roster rules and practices are somewhat unclear and not publicly available. But there is no player draft and players appear to have considerable discretion in choosing which clubs with which to sign. There is no indication though that the Super League players can veto trades.

Players in the Super League are not currently represented by a union. However, one might be expected soon as players in the men’s USL leagues are represented by the USLPA, which has negotiated collective bargaining agreements with the USL concerning pay and terms and conditions of employment.

Either way, the NWSL not only adopted global practices concerning player movement but also some of those of the Super League. This fact matters because history suggests that not both leagues will survive.

History and Present as A Guide

The sports landscape is littered with the vestiges of failed leagues and the occasional merger. The 1960s and 70s was the heyday of upstart leagues: the NFL absorbed the American Football League in 1966 in a move that included Congressional approval; the NBA incorporated four clubs from the American Basketball Association in 1976, which required court approval; and, the NHL took in four clubs from the World Hockey Association in 1979.?

There are common factors in each of these cases. First, players benefited from competition, resulting in increased salaries. Second, efforts by the established leagues (the NFL, NBA, and NHL) to impose and enforce restrictions on players to prevent them from leaving the leagues were met with antitrust lawsuits. Third, the competition was financially challenging to the established leagues but ruinous to the upstart leagues. And fourth, at the end of the day, only the established leagues were left standing.

Given this history, it is difficult to imagine that the NWSL and the USL can both operate successful and sustainable Division I women’s professional leagues. The players, understandably, will pursue their best interests, which may include jumping to different leagues in search of higher pay, better benefits, or greater rights. Such competition would put considerable financial strain on clubs that are likely already be operating at a loss (NWSL team revenues are only an average of about $10 million). At the same time, the leagues may be hurt by diluted talent, as the best players are not likely to all be in one league.

The world of professional women’s hockey is also a warning. The National Women’s Hockey League (NWHL) formed in 2015 and competed against the Canadian Women’s Hockey League (CWHL), formed in 2007.? The CWHL folded in 2019 and the NWHL rebranded as the Premier Hockey Federation (PHF) in 2021. However, the players union, the Professional Women’s Hockey League Players Association, dissatisfied with the PHF, formed its own league, the Professional Women’s Hockey League. The leagues subsequently merged.

The NWSL has in recent years begun to amass a contingent of well-resourced investors and business partners. While the USL has substantial experience operating professional soccer leagues, currently, the NWSL is clearly the marquee women’s professional soccer league in the United States. The recent changes to the CBA seem to remove any competitive advantage that the Super League might have had while strengthening the NWSL’s appeal to players, both nationally and globally.

To date, the NWSL has only been complimentary of the Super League. More realistically, with history as a guide, the league may hope that its newest developments will be a step in the process of its rival’s demise.