The National Women’s Soccer League Players’ Association has filed a grievance with the league for rejecting a contract offer extended to Trinity Rodman by the Washington Spirit.
The union is alleging the league violated the collective bargaining agreement when it denied the Spirit’s offer to re-sign Rodman. A person with knowledge of the proposal confirmed Thursday that negotiations were for a four-year, multimillion-dollar deal. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the deal.
“Trinity Rodman agreed to a compensation structure in good faith that would allow her to remain loyal to her first professional club, consistent with both the CBA and NWSL Competition Rules,” union executive director Meghann Burke said in a statement provided to The Associated Press on Thursday. “The NWSLPA has challenged the League’s rejection of this agreement on the grounds that it violates her free agency rights, but this isn’t about Trinity Rodman. If NWSL can deny her free agency rights, they can deny anyone’s. The NWSLPA will not allow it.”
Rodman, one of the NWSL’s biggest stars who also won a gold medal with the United States at the Paris Olympics, joined the league in 2021 and signed a four-year deal in early 2022. Now a free agent, she has been drawing interest from deep-pocketed European teams. Commissioner Jessica Berman said last month that the league would fight for Rodman to remain in the NWSL.
“Our goal is to ensure that the very best players in the world, including Trinity, continue to call this league home. We will continue to do everything we can, utilizing every lever available within our rules to keep Trinity Rodman here,” the league said in a statement Thursday. Bloomberg was the first to report that the league had rejected the Spirit’s offer to Rodman.
At issue is the NWSL’s salary cap, which is $3.5 million for each team for the 2026 season and will rise each year until it hits $5.1 million in 2030.
While the details of the offer to Rodman were not made public, the union said it was salary-cap compliant in three ways. The compensation structure fit within the projected team salary cap, calculated to include team revenue share; the NWSL can increase the base salary cap in any given year; and even if the deal does not fit within the cap by 2028, league rules permit each team one buyout per year without hitting their cap.
The Athletic reported that the contract offer to Rodman backloaded compensation into 2028 and 2029. With the league’s current media rights deal set to expire in 2027, a new deal could increase league revenue.
Berman insisted in November before the league title game between Gotham FC and the Spirit that team investment “has to have a rational relationship to revenue.”
“When we go through that process of reviewing the overall ecosystem and the value proposition that we’re offering to top talent and to our players, and we’re looking at the amount being invested in training facilities, in stadiums, in compensation for players, we have to look at it in the context of where our business is at,” Berman said. “And of course, we’ve made incredible strides in a very short period of time to drive commercial growth both at the league level and our clubs. But that is the lens that we consistently look at it through.”
___
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
