For the first time in its history, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) commenced a regular season this spring with no draft. A quintessentially American event, defined by hopes and dreams being on public display while teams trade players into the professional leagues without their explicit input, was scrapped by a collective bargaining agreement negotiated between the NWSL and the NWSL Players Association in August.
In so doing, a league unafraid of reinvention became the first major professional sports league in the United States to forgo the draft. That’s a seismic shift by any measure, and while the move puts the NWSL in line with global football standards the long-term implications will take much longer to assess. After all, the draft was not simply an entertaining way to distribute talent while introducing them to the public on a celebratory stage; it was also a useful means of ensuring parity in a league proud of its competitiveness. In the words of the NWSL’s commissioner, Jessica Berman: “There actually is nothing to point to as a case study of how to make this transition, because there is no league that has gone from a world of a draft and having years of service, to being able to earn free agency and just having that melt away overnight.”
