It’s almost unbelievable that the National Women’s Soccer League first recognized the players’ association as the players’ sole bargaining body less than six years ago, and that it wasn’t until two years ago that a collective bargaining agreement was even reached between the league and its players. On Thursday, several leadership changes in the NWSL and a world away from the women’s sports landscape later, the two sides announced a new collective bargaining agreement that would extend beyond the current one through 2030.

It’s more than just a collection of player victories that reflect the economic growth the NWSL has experienced in the era of NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman. It’s nothing short of revolutionary, a rethinking of the power dynamics within league-team relationships and a codification of the idea that women’s sports leagues don’t have to simply follow the model of established men’s leagues in the United States.

“This CBA represents a fundamental shift in American sports – not just women’s sports,” Meghann Burke, executive director of the NWSLPA, told me via email this afternoon. “Throughout these negotiations, we have been clear that we stand on the shoulders of generations of struggles to ensure that female athletes have the same autonomy and free participation rights afforded to most American workers. The same ideas that give NWSL players the freedom to reach their potential apply to other leagues, sports and men. Those leagues will now have the benefit of seeing our proof of concept: When we unleash the potential of our female athletes, we in turn unleash the potential of the league.

The landmark agreement, which comes shortly after a pre-existing CBA that runs through 2026 and takes the two teams beyond the NWSL’s current media rights deal – until 2030 – includes plenty of new financial rewards for those who play in the league. The league’s salary cap, which was $682,500 in 2021, will rise to $3.3 million in 2025 and $5.1 million by 2030. (There is also a salary floor.)

But a common recognition of the current situation on both negotiating sides goes hand in hand with the rapprochement and urgency of the agreement, which will not come into force until 2027.

As Vanity Fair’s Tom Kludt reported, it was the NWSL that approached the PA to negotiate an extension of the current contract, not the other way around. Both the league and the PA viewed the U.S.’s loss in the round of 16 of the 2023 World Cup as a potentially pivotal moment in which the U.S. could lose its competitive edge. But that wouldn’t matter outside of a context in which dominance in women’s soccer so clearly comes with a financial windfall that comes with being the best domestic league in the world.

Perhaps most tellingly, this deal significantly outlasts the four-year, $240 million media rights deal the NWSL signed in November 2023. That’s nothing short of money the league doesn’t already have on hand, and lots of it. Berman didn’t do this to put her league in debt. She did it to jump on a bandwagon and ensure that by 2027, the NWSL will still employ the vast majority of the 26 league players who competed in the Olympic final between the U.S. and Brazil.

Money alone cannot ensure that, however. And the way the league’s new rules handle player acquisition is distinctly European. The end of the draft, something taken for granted in US leagues but seen as a form of debt bondage by many players here and around the world, helps NWSL teams compete on an equal footing with their foreign rivals in retaining and developing the best young talent here and abroad. Free agency also ensures that players can choose their spots based on strategy, geography and satisfaction. And guaranteed contracts and player consent to every transfer mean that players are not put in the incredible position of not knowing where they will be working on any given day, or whether they will be paid for the privilege when they arrive somewhere.

It has already caught the attention of people like Satou Sabally, a vice president of the WNBPA who is expected to opt out of her current CBA at the end of the 2024 season, which would end her current agreement after the 2025 season.

“I think it’s great when athletes feel like they’re human and not part of a company where you can just be sent anywhere,” Sabally told me before her Thursday night game for the Dallas Wings against the New York Liberty. “I think it’s important that athletes have some power and that there’s some human decency in their jobs. Having your own life and kids in school goes beyond the jersey you wear or the city you play in. So that’s obviously important for athletes.”

Simply put, the existing framework is more than just a reflection of the values ​​Berman lived before her time as NWSL commissioner and implemented during her tenure at the helm of the NWSL. They are a two-pronged path to maintaining global dominance by ensuring the complete buy-in of her players, which is only possible thanks to the organization and forward-thinking of Burke and NWSLPA President Tori Huster.

Burke summed it up to Vanity Fair: “These are tectonic shifts in the American sports landscape.”

And the aftershocks are just beginning.