Reading an article about the CBA for the NWSL and with it they are canceling the college draft. In the article they alluded to issues with the draft, but did not state in specific complaints, just that there were issues. Made me very curious about what these issues were. If someone here is familiar with the situation and can provide insight, that would be greatly appreciated.

1. What issues did they have with the college draft?

2. Do they have a plan to keep competitive balance in the league? How are they going to prevent all the top players going to the same teams?

3. Do they have an alternate system planned, but just did not mention?

ColoradoMooseHerd said:

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Reading an article about the CBA for the NWSL and with it they are canceling the college draft. In the article they alluded to issues with the draft, but did not state in specific complaints, just that there were issues. Made me very curious about what these issues were. If someone here is familiar with the situation and can provide insight, that would be greatly appreciated.

1. What issues did they have with the college draft?

2. Do they have a plan to keep competitive balance in the league? How are they going to prevent all the top players going to the same teams?

3. Do they have an alternate system planned, but just did not mention?

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1. The NWSL has some inherent issues with fairness and how it's determined. Their teams, coaches, and players want to do whatever they want to do whenever they want to do it. The draft doesn't allow the good teams to pick the players they want to cuz the bad teams get to choose first. Period. So the good teams want to abolish the draft. The draft also doesn't allow the bad teams to pick as many players as they can to improve immediately. So the bad teams want to abolish the draft.

2. A. The plan to keep competitive balance in the league is to allow a free-for-all to sign whoever they want, whenever they want while also allowing the players to choose where they want to play whenever they want to play there.
B. They aren't going to prevent that. But they also can't prevent a good team from becoming a bad team if 6 players get pregnant at the same time or if a players partner (husband or wife) gets traded to another team or gets another job in a different city and the other partner follows.***

3. No. And this is the reason most leagues have parameters in place. Salary caps, player acquisition parameters, player movement windows, roster deadlines with bonuses attached, etc. Some control is better than no control.


***More on 2B way back in the WPS days, Alex Morgan was dating Servando Carrasco. He got traded to Orlando and she wanted to be with them. I think they met in college at Cal and they both played in Seattle. He ended up in Orlando somehow and she forced a trade to Orlando to be with him. He got sent back west and she ended up out west. If you follow his career, hers will match up. The same thing happened with Dom Dwyer and Sydney Leroux from KC to Orlando. The same thing with Ali Krieger and Ashlynn Harris if you need an LGBTQ example. Or Tobin Heath and Christen Press.

It's single-entity ownership like MLS, so concerns on both sides of the issue are basically moot.

This sounds like the real reason it's happening.

But as I alluded to, the real mechanism (and anti-mechanism) for parity is the same in NWSL as it is in MLS: single-entity ownership ensures that whatever's good for the league is good for all owners… so that's what they're gonna do.

It means that some clubs will always be good (big markets/fanbases = more money for the league), but it also means that all clubs will get a chance sometimes to be good (they gotta throw a bone to everyone from time to time to keep them interested).

I'm not sure I totally agree with your analogy to MLB. MLB has no salary cap so they tend to be very top heavy - similar to the European leagues. In the past the NWSL was ruled by US Soccer and where they placed the NT players since they supplemented the league. With the Kings, Longs, Iger/Bays now being involved the league is transforming but not so much as you think. Kansas City is one of the top teams but not a media mecca. They are excelling because of the ownership of the Longs and their commitment to expanding the game - even if they lose money. That's the same for Kang at Spirit. One of the other top teams is Orlando which has none of the advantages you cite. They are not in a major city, they had maybe 2,500 fans at their match last Friday versus Angel City. Gotham snuck up and won the tournament a couple years ago, but lost many of their top end players this last off season. I think, at the moment, the league is really determined by the commitment of ownerships and their willingness to lose money, if necessary, to provide everything else outside of salary cap that can lead to winning through facilities/scouting/coaches/etc. Many of the teams have new ownership/partners over the last few years and it will be interesting to see which ones invest in the areas where money isn't capped. You also have had the number of international players per team expand over the last few years and those who scouted and were prepared to sign the internationals have tended to have more success.

If you are talking about leagues with relegation - I seriously doubt you will see any league using that model unless they are grandfathered in. The money is too big nowadays and owners won't be willing to lose their guaranteed tv/media money when being expected to provide such a large initial investment. If the English leagues were formed today, they would not include relegation/promotion like it does currently.

You're right that Orlando is a conundrum. The behind closed-doors scheming is probably not as extreme as I make it out to be.

Tin-foil hats aside, the fact remains that all players are contracted to MLS, not their club. And finances are distributed to help level the playing field.

So MLS (and NWSL) don't really need extra measures to try to have parity… it's a built in feature of a centralized ownership model. But so is situational non-parity, if it's going to benefit the league (Messi as the prime example).

I read it as MLB and not MLS last night so I better understand your analogy today. For the NWSL - the teams who were ready to sign internationals when more slots opened up are the ones benefitting at the moment (Orlando, KC, Gotham each have an international forward playing big roles). Washington has a very aggressive owner and everyone else is playing catch up. I don't think it's as tin foil as you think for the NWSL at the moment. It's a league where a vast amount of new money has been thrust into it and is trying to grow to the next level of expectations.

King Koda said:

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Soccer is a sport played all over the world. The USA is the only nation with a draft system in place. As the women's game has grown in Europe, the NWSL was about to start losing many younger players to overseas because they could pick and choose where they wanted to play over there. The NWSL also had already instituted the U18 mechanism which enabled players under 18 to avoid the draft and sign with any NWSL team prior to entering college. International players (most) also avoided the draft and had freedom to sign wherever they wanted. The only group really subject to the draft were USA college players. This is the main reason you saw several top U18 players sign with NWSL team prior to entering college (and many just days before turning 18).

The main mechanism the NWSL has for parity is the salary cap. You are starting to see some of the top talents go overseas because none of those teams have a salary cap. For example, the salary cap of NWSL is in the $2 million range while the salary of Chelsea is around $5 million. The parity in the European leagues is terrible (2-4 top teams then the rest very mediocre). It will be interesting to see if the NWSL continues to hang on to the salary cap as more billionaires become owners and the older (in terms of NWSL age) owners cash out, or how fast the salary cap increases in the coming years. The valuation of NWSL teams has blown up from around $2 million five years ago to upward of $250 million for ACFC recently. The player money for women's soccer still isn't life changing but it is greatly improving and becoming a more viable career. It will be really interesting to watch over the next 10 years as the men's '26 world cup and then the women's '31 world cup both route through the USA.

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This guy knows.

King Koda said:

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Soccer is a sport played all over the world. The USA is the only nation with a draft system in place. As the women's game has grown in Europe, the NWSL was about to start losing many younger players to overseas because they could pick and choose where they wanted to play over there. The NWSL also had already instituted the U18 mechanism which enabled players under 18 to avoid the draft and sign with any NWSL team prior to entering college. International players (most) also avoided the draft and had freedom to sign wherever they wanted. The only group really subject to the draft were USA college players. This is the main reason you saw several top U18 players sign with NWSL team prior to entering college (and many just days before turning 18).

The main mechanism the NWSL has for parity is the salary cap. You are starting to see some of the top talents go overseas because none of those teams have a salary cap. For example, the salary cap of NWSL is in the $2 million range while the salary of Chelsea is around $5 million. The parity in the European leagues is terrible (2-4 top teams then the rest very mediocre). It will be interesting to see if the NWSL continues to hang on to the salary cap as more billionaires become owners and the older (in terms of NWSL age) owners cash out, or how fast the salary cap increases in the coming years. The valuation of NWSL teams has blown up from around $2 million five years ago to upward of $250 million for ACFC recently. The player money for women's soccer still isn't life changing but it is greatly improving and becoming a more viable career. It will be really interesting to watch over the next 10 years as the men's '26 world cup and then the women's '31 world cup both route through the USA.

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The real question is how important is Parity. In general it makes teams competitive by lowering the bar. Striving for an equal distribution of talent only works if there is more quality talent then positions on squads. That is not really the case.

King Koda said:

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I read it as MLB and not MLS last night so I better understand your analogy today. For the NWSL - the teams who were ready to sign internationals when more slots opened up are the ones benefitting at the moment (Orlando, KC, Gotham each have an international forward playing big roles). Washington has a very aggressive owner and everyone else is playing catch up. I don't think it's as tin foil as you think for the NWSL at the moment. It's a league where a vast amount of new money has been thrust into it and is trying to grow to the next level of expectations.

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the other inherent problem NWLS has compared to European leagues is logistical. Away days mean commercial flights, hotel rooms, meals, etc. But in the UK, away days often mean a short train or bus ride and that's it. Much easier to put the club's money on the pitch when you're not footing a huge logistical budget.

We can't even compare how the US does it to Europe without Pro/Rel.

Interesting article on ESPN today regarding NWSL's Parity compared to European Leagues.

It talks about much of what we have discussed here.

King Koda said:

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Interesting article on ESPN today regarding NWSL's Parity compared to European Leagues.

It talks about much of what we have discussed here.

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It shows that NWSL see parity as very important. I still question if that is really a benefit.