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Jeff Kassouf
The NWSL announced on Thursday that it will now allow intraleague loans for all teams, and that Boston and Denver franchises will have access to significantly more money to build their initial rosters as the first expansion teams to join the league since the new collective bargaining agreement eliminated drafts.
“I think it’s fair to say that we are trying more and more to align with our global counterparts,” Stephanie Lee, the NWSL’s VP of player affairs, told ESPN. “And I think in of itself, aligning with our global counterparts is part of the larger conversation of, ‘How do we be the best league in the world?'”
Boston Legacy FC and the yet-unnamed Denver expansion teams will bring the NWSL to 16 teams when they begin play next year.
The expansion teams will have access to up to $1,065,000 in allocation money beginning on July 1.
Bay FC and Utah Royals FC in 2024 — received $500,000 in additional transfer threshold spending but also had an expansion draft to select players from other rosters.
The NWSL, as part of its single entity system with a salary cap, has a net transfer threshold for each team that limits their spending on the open market. (Each incoming transfer adds to the threshold while each outgoing transfer lowers it.)
Lee told ESPN that the league and its sporting committee, composed of select board members, calculated the increased dollar amounts awarded to Boston and Denver by analyzing past expansion drafts and looking at the value of picks that were traded, the salaries for those players, and what a comparable player might cost on the open market.
Intraleague loans will allow all 16 teams including Boston and Denver, which begin play in 2026 to loan players to other NWSL teams, which is common practice in other leagues globally.
Abby Dahlkemper was traded from the North Carolina Courage to the Houston Dash in August 2021 for what North Carolina officials called “a loan.”
Dahlkemper then joined incoming expansion side San Diego Wave FC three months later for what the NWSL classified as “a three-team trade.”
Houston even said in its November 2021 news release that the initial trade included a stipulation that Dahlkemper would join the Wave after the 2021 season — a complicated way of saying she was on loan.
The introduction of intraleague loans could, in addition to a forthcoming second division, help solve a longstanding NWSL problem around player development and a lack of opportunities.
Intraleague loans will also allow Boston and Denver to start signing players on July 1 in the crucial summer window in Europe and loan them out in the NWSL immediately.
Lee said one other thing the league considered was allowing Boston and Denver to sign players earlier than other NWSL teams, but they ultimately decided that it wasn’t much of an advantage.
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