By Lesley Ryder
The predictions ahead of the NWSL championship skewed towards chaos. A high-flying Spirit attack, against a stubborn Gotham FC side was bound to be decided by one brilliant moment. On Saturday, Rose Lavelle’s signature left-footed curler sailed past a diving Aubrey Kingsbury, placing another brick in the foundation of her future Hall of Fame bid.
Tearful Spirit players walked the mixed zone as fan celebrations erupted from the concourse, the weight of a second consecutive finals loss on display. Trinity Rodman, in perhaps her last appearance as a Spirit player fielded questions about her future until her last step off the media line.
Rodman’s future, and the salary cap that’s brought it into question was a pillar of conversation all week in the lead-up to the match. The cap stands as the lone obstacle to giving Rodman the pay day she has earned after five seasons in DC. Commissioner Jessica Berman assured all in attendance on media day that keeping Trinity Rodman in the NWSL was a priority for the league, while also arguing that the firm salary cap made the weekend’s 8th seed upset possible. (Never mind the record-breaking signing 8th place Gotham FC made to complete their roster in September.)
The NWSL championship has bloomed from a modest event hosted by the highest seed in the playoffs, to a multi-day extravaganza brought to you by the league’s growing list of sponsors. Player safety issues continue to surface, but club valuations and rising expansion fees are now exponentially higher than player compensation. Perhaps this is why two days before the Championship, the NWSL announced Jessica Berman signed a multi-year contract of her own.
The money keeps rolling in
Jessica Berman is building the kind of future she envisions for the league– one where an NWSL team can be as valuable an asset as an NFL team. In the week before the championship festivities, the NWSL announced its 17th team would kick off in Atlanta, in 2028. The reported $165 million expansion fee is well higher than Denver’s reported $110 million fee paid earlier this year.
In the week of the championship, the NWSL took over downtown San Jose with partnership activations on land and sea. There’s no question the league has arrived as a commercially viable marketing opportunity for the biggest brands.
Today, CBS announced the NWSL Championship was the first broadcast to draw over one million viewers.
At the same time, the league has come to a crossroads of its own making. Washington Spirit star Trinity Rodman, the first player to sign a million-dollar contract in the NWSL, is set to become a free agent. Overseas teams are already clamoring to sign the marquee player, offering sums of money that the NWSL cannot match because of its restricted $3.5 million salary cap.
In the face of growing expansion fees, the salary cap stands as an artificial problem. The league has the ability to change, or lift the cap at will. But when asked about the possibility of raising the salary cap, the commissioner makes the kind of sustainability argument familiar to those following last place men’s teams, or the WNBA CBA negotiations.
“We do not believe the NWSL is a charity,” Berman said, taking questions after her “State of the League” address. “We believe it is a business, and to treat it like a business, it means that the amount that our teams are investing has to have a rational relationship to revenue.”
Berman also revealed the “Four C’s” the league believes keeps them in the conversation as the best league in the world: competition, compensation, club and coaching. According to Berman, infrastructure and the training environment is just as important to players as actual salary. “We believe that we are putting forth a very compelling value proposition to be able to attract, retain and develop top talent.” Berman says these metrics come out of “the conversations that we have with players from our league and from players around the world.”
It’s difficult to give these metrics from the league any weight when its star players continue to leave for overseas clubs with deeper pockets. Angel City unveiled their brand-new training facility earlier this season, but it wasn’t enough to keep their homegrown phenom Alyssa Thompson from going to Chelsea over the summer transfer window.
About that parity…
There’s definitely an excitement to the NWSL. On any given day, any given team might upset the top dogs. The Chicago Stars, for example, lost 6-0 to the Orlando Pride on the league’s opening night. Six months later, the Stars won 5-1 in the reverse fixture. The Stars might qualify for the competitive “C” in Berman’s reasoning, but they fall short in the other categories this season.
Despite boasting a billionaire owner, the Stars find themselves as “have nots” as the gap from the “haves” grows. As an anonymous GM said in this year’s ESPN survey, "The ones at the bottom of the standings are there for a reason.” The club does not own their facilities, and is moving to a temporary turf field for matches next season. The Stars had four different head coaches in 2025. On opening day of the 2026 season, they’ll have their 5th head coach in a calendar year.
With each passing season it’s becoming clear which teams are emerging as elite NWSL clubs. The Kansas City Current broke the total points record set last season in their shield-winning run this season. Six out of the eight playoff teams from 2024 qualified in 2025. All four of the 2025 semifinalists won a title in the last four years. The success of these teams, in part, comes from top-down investments in scouting and analytics, and spending the money to fill their rosters with as much talent as possible.
Continue considering the Kansas City Current. After finishing two points out of last place in 2023, the club took to their scouting files to build up their roster. Youth standout players Alex Pfieffer and Claire Hutton joined the Current through the league’s under-18 signing mechanism. The team acquired Temwa Chawinga, the 2023 global scoring champion from Wuhan of the Chinese Super League on a free transfer. They bolstered their defense in the summer window adding league veteran Kayla Sharples and USWNT centerback, Alana Cook with signings totalling $155,000. The result of their efforts? A 2024 semifinal, and the 2025 Shield.
Someone might want to try telling that to the Chicago Stars.
Safety issues persist
In 2022, Jessica Berman came to the league on the heels of reports of abuse at multiple clubs. Investigations by the league, the NWSLPA and the USSF found that systemic issues silenced player complaints, and protected abusive coaches as they moved to new positions. In February, the NWSL reached a $5 million settlement with the Attorneys General of NY, IL, and DC for the league’s role in a series of scandals in 2021. As part of the settlement, the league must submit semiannual reports to the Attorneys General disclosing all complaints, formal or informal, alleging misconduct, and the status of any investigations that may be underway.
The first semi-annual report included league documents revealing 43 complaints, leading to nine investigations in 2024, and five complaints in the first half of the 2025 season. The complaints included potential fraternization policy violations, toxic team environments, and injury load concerns. The team names, and the resolutions of the complaints were redacted in the report.
Jessica Berman pledged to continue working in concert with the Attorneys General, and took pride in “the way our systemic reform has been operationalized and adapted and adopted by the ecosystem,” she told reporters after last week’s address. “I'm not aware of another professional sports league that does as much as we do to provide that open line of communication with the players.”
Earlier this year, the San Francisco Chronicle reported the league’s anonymous reporting mechanisms created confusion among players whether their report was actually filed with the league. The NWSL was using the same RealResponse software for anonymous complaints, and for the end-of-season survey. After this report, the NWSL confirmed to The Chronicle they would utilize different software to reduce confusion between the two processes.
This season, Jessica Berman faced scrutiny for her handling of multiple serious medical incidents, a reported argument with team ownership over a heat-delayed match, and the league’s response to a transphobic op-ed from former Angel City player, Elizabeth Eddy. The NWSL executive committee seems satisfied by the work done by the commissioner nonetheless.
A press release announcing Berman’s extension lauded the commercial success, and the “model” player safety programs implemented during Berman’s tenure, saying the contract extension will “ensure the league will build on that foundation, strengthening the pathway for the next generation of athletes and cementing the NWSL’s role as one of the most dynamic and influential sports leagues in the world.”
“It’s been the honor of my career to lead the NWSL during such an extraordinary period of growth,” said Berman in the same press release. “Every success we’ve achieved, from expansion to investment to the player experience, is the result of collaboration across this league. I’m proud of what we’ve built and even more excited about where we’re headed. The best is yet to come.”
If the NWSL can’t figure out a way to push some of that increased investment towards its own salary cap, they’ll have to settle for being excited about a future without Trinity Rodman.