Why are so Many NWSL Players Retiring?

So,why are so many NWSL players retiring?

Perhaps the answer lies in this question:If one was to conduct a poll and ask average Americans what the age of retirement is, what would the answer be? Sixty? Sixty-Five? Fifty-Five?

I’ll give you some answers : twenty-two, twenty three, twenty-six, twenty-five.

Those are the ages in which a recent crop of NWSL players decided to hang up their cleats for good. I’ll say that again, those are the ages of several NWSL players that have decided to retire from the sport. Many, if not all of them were at their athletic peak, many looked upon to play key roles on their respective teams. So why then have so many decided to call it quits? Each of them have their own reasons, but perhaps for Jazmine Reaves, CoCo Goodson, Taylor Vancil, Kate Deines and the others, the unifying theme is the uncertainty of their fledgling league.

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Some, like twenty-six years olds Nikki Washington and Nikki Marshall have enjoyed success with the women’s Under-20 team,yet decided that a career in professional soccer was not a viable option. And the saddest part of all is that unless things drastically change for the league, there will be many, many more retirements to come.

Some Sad and Frightening Figures

$6,842.

That is the minimum salary for a NWSL player. The NWSL season lasts six months. Do the math. The maximum salary is just below $38,000. By comparison, thanks to the new collective bargaining agreement, the minimum salary for an MLS player is $60,000. Ten years ago it was roughly $24,000.  The salary cap of the nine NWSL teams is $265,000, although this figure is not inclusive of the top international (Canadian and Mexican) players, nor of the top American stars. Those salaries are paid for by their federations.

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One could make the argument that even the MLS players are underpaid compared to the salaries of the NBA,NFL,NHL and MLB, but those leagues enjoy revenues in the hundreds of millions, if not billions. However, even the most marginal of MLS soccer players can make a living on their salary. That is not the case in the NWSL. “It’s actually pathetic when I think about what we make,” Deines, who played for Seattle Reign FC for the first two seasons of the NWSL, was quoted as saying.

For Deines (above), who holds a Master’s degree in continued education, retiring from the Reign did not come without some struggle. She was due to see a increase in playing time due to World Cup absences this season and possibly next due to the Olympics. However, staying in such a low paying environment while continuing to turn down more lucrative options, just was not a viable way to live. To help alleviate the high cost of living in Seattle, Deines had taken to living with several of her teammates, something many NWSL players do. Each franchise also offers the fans the opportunity to “host” players in their homes, either for the full season or parts of it.

Now to the NWSL’s credit, they are trying a more fiscally responsible model that the prior two women’s professional leagues did not. The WUSA, which was the first of these leagues, blew through their entire $100 million dollar war chest in just two seasons. The Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS) league opened six years later and tried to be more financially savvy than its predecessor, creating a salary cap of $500,000 per team. Within three years, with losses in the tens of millions, it too went the way of the WUSA. Now in its third season, and boasting the best women’s talent on the planet, the NWSL is hoping they can break through where the other two leagues did not: on television.

There have been rumblings of an impending television deal with the NWSL for a few weeks now, yet I have not been able to find any information that will positively confirm this. If this is true, than the league has a chance for long term survival. If not, who knows what will happen. Women’s soccer as a whole has never been more popular than it is right now. If a deal is to be struck, now is the time.

For Deines, Marshall and the others, nobody will deny that they loved the game. Each player in the NWSL play because they love the game and each of them see their selves as laying a foundation, building something that will take not only time, but money. Perhaps the sacrifices they are making now will benefit players in decades to come. However, love of the game is pitted against the simple reality of trying to make a living. Most players supplement their meager salary with other jobs, maybe as a coach, either for a club or school, or in some other line of work; a sentiment echoed by NWSL commissioner Jeff Plush: “Look, the player looking to make a career out of this who is on the lower end of the wage scale is going to have to do other things, whether that is coaching at a high school or club or those kind of things.We are very respectful of that and we fully understand that we need to continue to build out our potential business platforms that they can tap into to help augment their salary. We have to be mindful of where we are. I’m very cognizant of this – it’s not all the money in the world, but where we are today is we are in the third year of a long-term strategy to have a very sustainable, robust league in this country. It’s just going to take some time,” he told NBC Sports World.

Whether or not the NWSL has the time remains to be seen. Whether or not they have the money is something else all together.

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figures and quotes courtesy of sportsworld.nbcsports.com/nwsl players

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