Why the NWSL Draft Had to Go
This is Issue #4 of Seeing the Present, a newsletter about my thoughts on current global trends in soccer, with an eye toward what they might tell us about the future of the beautiful game.
This post first appeared as an op-ed on Backheeled at this link.
On August 22nd, the NWSL Players Association and the NWSL announced they had reached a groundbreaking new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). It was a watershed moment in American sports, as the NWSL became the first major league to eliminate its college draft. The central theme of the new CBA is an increased emphasis on player autonomy, aligning the NWSL with how professional soccer operates outside the United States: fully guaranteed contracts, no trades without player consent, and universal free agency.
So why did the draft get nixed? From the players’ perspective, it’s pretty obvious: it restricted their freedom to make choices about their own career. Here’s how Tori Huster, the current president of the NWSLPA, described her draft experiences to Time Magazine:
“I’ll tell you, from being in multiple drafts, it’s tough. To not know where you’re going to end up, what’s going to be necessary, will you have family close to you, will it be a place where you get playing time? All of those things are different aspects of a player’s life that need to be in the hands of the player.”
But what about from the league’s perspective? Far from being a tough pill to swallow for the owners, I believe ending the draft was a smart decision that will positively contribute to the NWSL’s ambition of being the best league in the world for two reasons I discuss below.
The NWSL is in a unique position among American sports leagues where the draft jeopardizes the league’s ability to retain top talent.
To me, the best way to understand how the NWSL operates from a unique position among major leagues is to visualize the American sports landscape with a simple Venn diagram made of two sets:
Leagues that are considered (or have a legitimate argument to be considered) the top league in the world for their sport.
Leagues that face genuine competition from other leagues abroad.
As I outline below, the risk-reward analysis of a draft is different for each of these three segments, especially when it comes to the league’s relationship to the best talent in its sport, and that’s why an NWSL draft didn’t make sense in the long term.
A: Best League in the WorldLeagues like the NFL, the (W)NBA, the NHL, and MLB, which are so dominant in their sport that no other league in the world comes close to them, effectively have a monopoly on the top talent in that sport. Choosing to distribute that talent through a draft system carries very little risk, since the talent has no comparable options to choose from, and it has the dual upsides of fostering parity and creating a flagship event that can generate interest, views, and clicks, allowing the league to derive revenue from the draft.
B: Global CompetitionUnlike in American football, the top talent in soccer is not entirely concentrated in a single league—it’s distributed across multiple competing leagues around the globe. MLS has made huge strides in its ability to attract some of this talent (look no further than reigning Ballon d’Or winner Lionel Messi at Inter Miami) as it pushes to one day enter the “best league in the world” conversation along the likes of the Premier League in England or La Liga in Spain, something I believe and hope it can accomplish in the not-so-distant future.
But because the best soccer players in the world aren’t coming out of college, the MLS draft cannot constitute a risk to the league’s ability to attract or retain that talent. The draft simply serves a different purpose for MLS than it does for the leagues above: it is one of several entry pathways into the league, just not the one that star players use. As such, the draft has lower upside but is still low-risk.
C: Best League in the World AND Global CompetitionThe NWSL sits at the intersection of the two sets as the only American major league that is considered one of the best leagues in the world but where that argument is not definitively settled because of competition with other strong leagues like the Women’s Super League in England. And while women’s college soccer still produces some of the best talent in the world, the NWSL does not have a monopoly on that talent, since players coming out of college can (and do) bypass the draft to head directly to Europe, where they enjoy the freedom to sign with the club of their choice (e.g. Jayde Riviere, Eva Gaetino).
Therefore, by artificially restricting player freedom within the US, the NWSL draft incentivized some of the best players in the world to avoid the league entirely, posing a huge risk to the league’s long-term ambitions of establishing itself as the best league in the world. You can’t be the best league in the world without the best talent, and that’s why keeping the draft didn’t make sense for the NWSL.
The NWSL draft encouraged poor decision-making and hasty roster-building.
If you want to be the best league in the world, in addition to the best players, you also want to have the best teams. And in a league with so much parity, building a successful roster is very hard and requires a lot of careful thought and diligent work.
Unfortunately, the aspects of the draft that make it good entertainment are detrimental to the goal of making sound, long-term roster-building decisions. After participating in two NWSL drafts in my role as Assistant General Manager and Chief Soccer Officer at Gotham FC, one of my main takeaways from draft day is that no matter how much preparation you do beforehand, there are so many variables to account for that front offices are still forced into making split-second decisions with incomplete information. Add a massive clock counting down overhead after several hours of sitting under extremely bright stage lights, and you’re expected to make choices that could alter the course of your club’s season in a true pressure cooker.
Part of the reason our 2023 draft was so successful was that we did all our draft-day business in advance, when we could think clearly and rationally. (CBS and Sports Illustrated both gave us an A- grade, and that was before we went on to win the league.) All of the major decisions we made—trading the #1 pick to Angel City for Yazmeen Ryan and allocation money, using that allocation money to buy the #2 pick to trade to Kansas City for Lynn Williams, and selling our later picks to buy the #4 pick to draft Jenna Nighswonger, who went on to become the Rookie of the Year—were already locked in before the first countdown started. That meant our draft was effectively over by the #4 pick, which proved to be a very successful self-binding strategy to inhibit ourselves from making rash decisions that we would later regret.
With the draft gone, teams are now free from a system that was actually detrimental to deliberate roster-building, the league eliminated one of its biggest vulnerabilities in its quest to attract the best talent in the world, and players have an unprecedented amount of control over where they choose to start their careers, making the decision a win-win-win for all parties involved.
To sign up for a free career advice or mentorship session, use this Calendly link. Sign-ups are first-come, first-served, and you must be subscribed to Seeing the Present.