NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman talks 2027 calendar, media rights deal and weather protocol
· Yahoo Sports
A lot has happened since September, when National Women’s Soccer League commissioner Jessica Berman said she intended to stay with the league.
In November, the NWSL announced her three-year contract extension, keeping Berman in the role through the 2028 season. Before the ink on her contract was dry, the league introduced the High Impact Player rule, in part, to keep Trinity Rodman, one of its most marketable players, stateside. It welcomed two new franchises, Boston Legacy and Denver Summit, to play in March, postponed potential calendar-flip discussions until 2030, launched a new footwear exposure policy and most recently terminated its short-lived streaming agreement with Victory+.
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Through the first 15 weeks of the season, NWSL matches averaged 11,174 fans, the second-highest attendance average in league history — behind the 2024 season, which finished with an average of 11,249 spectators.
Expansion clubs in particular have helped fuel those numbers. Denver opened its inaugural season before more than 63,000 spectators, while Boston attracted approximately 30,000 for its debut. Gotham FC hosted more than 42,000 fans for its match at Citi Field, a one-off game against the Washington Spirit at the home of the New York Mets.
Berman, however, is more interested in median attendance as a sign that a “rising tide is lifting all boats.”
After a monthlong break for the men’s World Cup, with the league back in action, Berman sat down with journalists to discuss the state of the league and key updates. Here are the highlights:
Championship tickets and the 2027 schedule puzzle
The league will play its 2026 championship game Nov. 21 at one of its best-attended venues, Washington’s Audi Field. Presale for the final starts Aug. 24, with the regular sales following Aug. 26.
For the two teams that make the final, that means just over a month off before another preseason. The NWSL will kick off its 2027 regular season Feb. 11, the earliest start in league history, less than a week after the Challenge Cup, a match between the NWSL champions and the Shield winners, on Feb. 6. The early start is to accommodate a seven-week break for the Women’s World Cup in Brazil, The Athletic reported last week. The timing also aligns for the league to have its opening week lead into the Super Bowl in Los Angeles.
“It is an ABC (broadcast) Super Bowl. Because we share a broadcast partner, we will be working closely with ESPN to make sure that the NWSL is woven into the weekend stories, and we’re very excited about that,” Berman said. “As Carlin Hudson, who oversees strategy and runs our schedule, says, making the schedule is a zero-sum game. There are trade-offs, and this was the best decision given the opportunity we have with this broadcast partner.”
The schedule will also have to navigate Major League Soccer’s switch to a fall-to-spring calendar, with 10 NWSL teams sharing venues with the men’s league. However, Berman also sees that as an advantage.
“Right now, being on a spring-to-fall footprint with MLS, we both have our playoffs at the same time, and what that means is that there are holds across lots of dates with uncertainty,” Berman said. “With us being on different calendars, that’s no longer going to be the case. We’re going to have the ability to go into weeks that might otherwise have been reserved but not confirmed, and that will be helpful.”
— Asli Pelit
Latest on the league’s media rights deal
The NWSL abruptly ended its free-to-watch streaming agreement with Victory+ last week. The move does not alter the league’s broadcast schedule but brings an end to a partnership that lasted less than a year.
According to sources within the league speaking on condition of anonymity to protect relationships due to the legal nature of the matter, the split was driven by unfulfilled payments by Victory+, prompting the NWSL to shift those matches to its own streaming service while maintaining free access for fans. According to Berman, the league’s priority is finding a digital partner that already has a large, engaged audience, allowing the NWSL to reach fans where they already consume content rather than building that audience from scratch.
“We’re evaluating options for the remainder of this season and next season, and if and when we find a partner that meets our objectives, we’d be evaluating to provide it as an opportunity to invite new fans into the game,” Berman said. “We know that streaming and digital is a place where the next generation of fans live, and we’re actively talking to the marketplace about what makes sense.”
The NWSL signed a record $240 million, four-year media rights agreement with CBS, ESPN, Prime Video and Scripps Sports in November 2023. In addition to the league’s deal with Victory+, Gotham FC, Washington Spirit, Bay FC, Orlando Pride and Angel City had agreements with the platform, but currently only Angel City has an active deal.
The league can start negotiating its next deal after the 2026 season.
“All of our broadcasters have expressed their continued enthusiasm and excitement for the product, and all the opportunities and milestones in the future,” Berman said. “This will obviously be top of the agenda for the next six to 12 months, as well as we’ll look to really map the future of what our broadcast landscape will look like in 2028 and beyond.”
— Pelit
Expansion and relocation
The NWSL has expanded rapidly in the last few years. A Columbus ownership group paid a record $205 million expansion fee, surpassing the $165 million Atlanta paid a few months earlier, to join the league. Both teams will start play in 2028.
The league is also focused on ensuring its existing clubs have the resources to keep up with that growth. One franchise drawing attention is Racing Louisville, whose ownership group has begun exploring the sale of a minority stake, seeking additional capital. Berman confirmed the league is actively involved in that process.
“It is always the preference of the league to maintain the continuity of the location of our teams,” Berman said. “But it is not a never. It is just not preferred, and where there are circumstances that warrant consideration, we will look at that.”
— Pelit
Salary-cap compliance
The NWSL operates as a single entity, meaning it has oversight of all player contracts and can closely monitor them in a way that other leagues cannot, Berman said. Questions about the league’s salary cap are ongoing, especially this season with the implementation of the HIP rule. The salary cap under the current collective bargaining agreement will rise to over $5 million per team by 2030.
“Importantly, all league contracts or all player contracts have to be signed by the league. Unlike NHL, Major League Baseball, the NFL, NBA, we are a single entity, and so that gives us the opportunity to have, arguably … greater visibility into the terms of contracts that exist between players and clubs, because we are the only ones who can pay players,” Berman said. “That is a fundamental distinction of our league, and something that should, I would argue, build confidence that we have visibility into what’s happening with our clubs.”
The league has a team whose main responsibility is salary-cap compliance.
“Each of the dedicated staff is allocated to three or four teams, and they are responsible for knowing the ins and outs of every single roster decision that’s happening at the club level and monitoring compliance,” Berman said.
The league, she added, also audits the salary cap annually as an “additional level of protection and confidence that everyone is playing by the rules, and so that the clubs know and understand what our expectations are, and how we’re going to enforce consistency across all clubs and players.”
— Melanie Anzidei
Extreme weather response
The weather has been a high-profile topic across global soccer and recently was a cause for concern during the Queens Classic between Gotham and the Spirit in New York. To adapt to the air quality on July 15, due to smoke lingering in the region from wildfires in Canada, match officials imposed two hydration breaks during each half, essentially dividing the match into six parts.
The breaks clearly disrupted play, with Spirit and U.S. women’s national team forward Rodman saying after the game, “Air quality was rough.
“If we have to have a hydration break every 15 minutes, then we shouldn’t be playing the game, and that’s my opinion,” Rodman said. “But at the end of the day, there’s 40,000 people. It’s a whole event, so it’s really tough. It’s just a really hard situation for everyone to work around.”
On Wednesday, Berman said the league will likely reference that match as a “data point” when reassessing policies at the end of the 2026 season.
“We use the data from the season to evaluate all of our policies and hydration breaks, and our heat policy is one where that has been true and will continue to be true,” Berman said.
She emphatically said, also, that the league works with “world-renowned subject-matter experts” and the league’s medical team “to advise on the appropriate guardrails for safety measures to be able to play, whether it’s air quality or heat.” The league works with the Korey Stringer Institute as one of the league’s partners. The nonprofit is housed at the University of Connecticut and focuses on “developing and disseminating practical strategies to prevent sudden death in sport,” per the nonprofit’s website.
The league recently updated its extreme weather policies, among other rule changes, ahead of the Challenge Cup in June. This followed last year’s 3 1/2-hour match delay when the Kansas City Current’s home match against the Orlando Pride was afflicted with extreme heat.
As The Athletic reported at the time, the match had been flagged by both teams because of the midafternoon kickoff and expected high temperatures in August. The incident raised concerns over player safety and the league’s commercial interests, paving the way for the changes implemented this year — the biggest change being a clearly defined hierarchy for decision-making when extreme heat may be a concern.
— Anzidei
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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