Catching Up: The NWSL’s New Collective Bargaining Agreement and How Could Bring Them Level with Their International Counterparts

Oct 3, 2025

By Máire Rock

On August 22nd, 2024, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and the NWSL Players Association agreed to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that drastically changes how player mobility within the NWSL operates. Along with a raised salary cap, eliminating limits on an individual player’s maximum annual salary, and expanded parental leave and childcare benefits, this new CBA granted players unrestricted free agency and eliminated the NWSL Draft and Expansion Draft.

This new CBA went into effect immediately, which means it has immediate implications for the world of American women’s soccer. Incoming players will now sign directly with a team rather than declaring for the draft. Free agents now have equal rights to sign with the team they desire, and no trades can be executed without the player’s consent. These changes aligned the NWSL rules with the FIFA Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players. This paper will explore whether or not the new NWSL Collective Bargaining Agreement will make the league more competitive with its international counterparts.

Free agency for the NWSL is the “ability of professional team athletes to change teams when their contracts expire.” Previously, Free Agency was only available “for any Player whose SPA (Standard Player Agreement) is expiring and who has at least six NWSL Service Years.” A player earned a service year “if they [were] on the Roster of a Team in the NWSL at any time during that League Season.” A player could enter Restricted Free Agency if their SPA was expiring, or they didn’t have an existing SPA and had at least three NWSL Service Years. This permitted players to “select a Team for the purposes of negotiating a new SPA” but only after “the Player’s current team [had] an opportunity to match an offer that the Player receive[d] from another Team in salary.” This greatly restricted the movement of players between teams and allowed teams a large amount of control over not only just a player’s professional life, but also their personal one. By controlling their professional life, teams were also controlling where players were living and how long they lived in one place. It gave them extremely limited mobility, and they had to play three years in the league before getting any type of relief from that, and three more before they were fully in control of their own career.

      Unlike their American counterparts, soccer (football) players in Europe have long held more liberal free agency rights. In 1995, the European Court of Justice ruled that the rules that were governing placed restrictions on the free movement of workers and was therefore prohibited by Article 39(1) of the EC Treaty. Known as the Bosman ruling, this case allows EU footballers the right to a free transfer at the expiration of their contracts. Therefore, their playing rights are not held by their current team even at the expiration of their contracts. That freedom of movement for the players makes the leagues more competitive because all players can choose the team that they want to move to and are not limited to either where they were drafted or where their rights are held. It is also an attractive quality for the European leagues when compared with the NWSL. There is more certainty and more control around a player’s mobility in Europe. Therefore, it was unlikely for European players to consider playing in the United States when these rules did not allow for the mobility they were used to. Large amounts of talent stayed overseas instead of exploring the American market.

Under the new CBA, NWSL players are immediately characterized as free agents when their SPA expires. Instead of having their playing rights held by their current team at the expiration the agreement, players have freedom of choice in who they negotiate and sign with. If they do not receive an offer, the player will remain a free agent with their rights unassigned in the NWSL. By making these changes, the NWSL has aligned itself more with how player movement works in soccer internationally. This makes the league more attractive to those international players, as the way player movement works now in the US more attractive than the old model for the reasons mentioned above. Therefore, this new CBA makes the NWSL more competitive with its international counterparts because it makes the league more attractive to international players. By opening the market, those top tier players are more likely to come to play in the NWSL. This brings more eyes to the NWSL and promotes its popularity worldwide, which makes it more competitive with the other international leagues.

By making these changes to the CBA, the NWSL becomes a more attractive league to international players, and this makes the league more competitive. However, simply updating the CBA to allow for greater player movement does not make it an automatic that the league will be more competitive. There are several ways that the NWSL can further evolve to make themselves more competitive with the international leagues.

One way the NWSL could make the league more competitive with the European leagues is increased investment in a club’s infrastructure. The infrastructure of the women’s clubs in Europe are more well established than the clubs in the United States—due in large part to the longer history of the sport—because most teams use the state-of-the-art facilities of their associated men’s teams. The Premier League Stadium Fund is also providing grants to WSL teams in England to accelerate growth in domestic women’s football. Teams can use this money to enhance their infrastructure and for future facility projects. NWSL teams have started to invest in female player specific facilities, such as Bay FC announcing the plans for a team specific facility on Treasure Island and the KC Current opening CPKC Stadium in 2024, the first stadium purpose-built exclusively for a professional women’s soccer team. If the NWSL can match and exceed the investment from European teams, this commitment to women’s soccer in the United States will make the NWSL a more attractive league for international talents.

The NWSL can also continue to improve its media partnerships with streaming services, partnership agreements and live television deals. By doing this, the NWSL will grow its brand outside the United States. In the United States, NWSL games are free to stream on NWSL+ through different streaming services or on certain live television channels. They are available internationally on different platforms, but only for a certain number of games, and some playoff matches are exclusive to certain channels. If the NWSL can expand the number of games that it airs internationally, this will raise the leagues profile internationally and attract higher-level competition to the league.

The new NWSL CBA terms that expand player movement opens the player market makes the league more attractive to international players. With more international talent interest, the league will become more competitive because of the increase in the amount of talent and name recognition that the talent brings. However, expanding the mobility of players alone will not entice that talent. The NWSL must make significant investments in its clubs and expand its media rights deals internationally to truly make the league more enticing—and therefore more competitive—with its international counterparts.

Máire Rock is a current 3L at Santa Clara University School of Law perusing the Sports Law Certificate. She currently works for the Santa Clara University Athletic Department. She is interested in perusing a position in the world of sports law post-bar.

References

  • FIFA, FIFA Clearing House Regulations,
https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/7c9e9c5185db9eb6/original/FIFA-Clearing-House-Regulations-January-2025-edition.pdf

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