The NWSL on Tuesday implemented a "High Impact Player" rule (HIP), which would allow teams in 2026 to spend up to $1 million outside of the salary cap on star players, such as the Washington Spirit's Trinity Rodman, who meet certain criteria.
The news came minutes before the NWSL Players Association voiced their opposition, issuing a statement saying they would now take action to "to enforce the rights of the Players we represent."
In Tuesday's statement, the union said: "The NWSL Players Association opposes the League's decision to move forward without bargaining over the High Impact Player Rule.
"Under federal labor law, changes to compensation under the salary cap are a mandatory subject of bargaining -- not a matter of unilateral discretion. Fair pay is realized through fair, collectively bargained compensation systems, not arbitrary classifications.
"A league that truly believes in the value of its Players would not be afraid to bargain over it.
"The NWSLPA has put forward a clear, lawful alternative: raising the Team Salary Cap to compete in a global labor market.
"Additionally, we have proposed that through collective bargaining, we work together to create a system for projecting revenue sharing numbers in future years so that Teams and Players can negotiate multi-year deals with certainty. The Union remains ready and willing to engage in good-faith bargaining."
Earlier this week, NWSLPA executive director Meghann Burke told ESPN that the creation of any such rule requires collective bargaining and that the union opposed it.
"Our position is actually that this exceeds the scope of the league's authority," Burke told Abby Wambach and Julie Foudy on their "Welcome to the Party" podcast. "Our position is that they must bargain with us over this kind of proposal, not that they merely consult with us."
Burke told ESPN: "The league is trying to control and interfere by trying to dictate which players get paid what with this pot of funds. Our position is that teams -- GMs, soccer ops, business folks at the team level -- are uniquely positioned to make judgment calls about how to structure their rosters, how to negotiate deals.
The league said on Wednesday that under the new rule, each club may exceed the league's established salary cap by up to $1M for high impact players beginning in 2026.
The NWSLPA had proposed that the NWSL raise the salary cap by $1M beginning in 2026, which is the same amount of money that the league has now cleared for each team to spend through the HIP rule.
The league said on Wednesday that the threshold will increase year-over-year at the same base rate as the salary cap. The additional allotment may be applied to a single player or distributed among multiple players, providing clubs with meaningful flexibility to recruit and retain high impact talent while preserving competitive balance. For any contract using this provision, the cap charge of the high-impact player must be a minimum of 12% of the base salary cap.
The league called the new measure a "historic increase in league investment" in a news release, noting that it will increase league-wide player spending by up to $16M and a total potential investment of up to $115M over the term of the current CBA.
"Ensuring our teams can compete for the best players in the world is critical to the continued growth of our league," NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said in a news release. "The High Impact Player Rule allows teams to invest strategically in top talent, strengthens our ability to retain star players, and demonstrates our commitment to building world-class rosters for fans across the league."
The league said that teams would be able to sign players under the rule "immediately, provided the contract terms do not require the team to utilize the rule until the effective date."
The rule was implemented in the wake of the contract impasse involving Rodman, as well as the departures of United States women's national team stars Alyssa Thompson and Naomi Girma earlier this year. Both Thompson and Girma left for transfers of over $1M to join English side Chelsea.
In Rodman's case, her contract expires at the end of December, meaning she could sign elsewhere without the Spirit receiving any compensation.
The NWSL recently rejected a proposed contract between the Spirit and Rodman, alleging that the deal violated the "spirit" of the rules and accusing Rodman of preemptive "salary cap circumvention."
The NWSL Players Association then filed a grievance on behalf of Rodman against the league on Dec. 3. In the grievance, the PA said that the contract was legal and that the league's veto of the deal violated at least five points of the collective bargaining agreement. It is unclear the extent to which the NWSL Players Association is on board with the NWSL's latest announcement.
In Wednesday's news release, the NWSL said that per the terms of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, the league had "exercised its discretion" to implement the new rule following "consultation" with the NWSLPA.
ESPN's Jeff Kassouf contributed to this story.