Name: NWSL Commissioner on Rebuilding Trust and the Global Fight for Talent
Uploaded: 2026-07-16T17:35:00Z
Duration: 23 min 9 s
Description: At the WSJ Sports: The Next Sports Economy event, the NWSL commissioner tells the WSJ Leadership Institute's Wendy Bounds how she used radical transparency to repair trust with the league's players. She also breaks down the league's push for dedicated stadiums and the economic realities of the U.S. youth soccer pipeline.

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At the WSJ Sports: The Next Sports Economy event, the NWSL commissioner tells the WSJ Leadership Institute's Wendy Bounds how she used radical transparency to repair trust with the league's players. She also breaks down the league's push for dedicated stadiums and the economic realities of the U.S. youth soccer pipeline. Photo: WSJ Leadership Institute

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At the WSJ Sports: The Next Sports Economy event, the NWSL commissioner tells the WSJ Leadership Institute's Wendy Bounds how she used radical transparency to repair trust with the league's players. She also breaks down the league's push for dedicated stadiums and the economic realities of the U.S. youth soccer pipeline.

NWSL Commissioner on Rebuilding Trust and the Global Fight for Talent

How about the big game yesterday?

I know you're all thinking that Wendy's talking about the World Cup, but she's actually talking about Gotham playing the Washington Spirit at City Field, where we hosted more than 40,000 fans in the middle of an apocalypse. So it was amazing actually.

Right. I mean, the highest rated women's sports event in New York City, is that right? I mean, highest attended.

Highest attended and honestly, on a Wednesday night in the middle of what some have described as the busiest week in sports history, there was a lot of questions about whether we could pull it off and actually we sold it out and it was an incredible event that I think was a healthy reminder that if you build it, they will come.

And as a long suffering Mets fan, I can say without, with certainty that that is the most exciting thing that's been happening at City Field lately. All right, but this is a far cry from four years ago when most people in this room know you inherited what was a very broken system. You know, the league wasn't just underbuilt or in need of transformation, I mean, trust itself was really broken and that's why we're going to ground our conversation today in leadership, because leadership is what it's taken to put it on this path to growth. I want to talk about trust repair for just a moment and about what you did with the players in the beginning. They are the foundation of the business. How did you even begin to get them to start to trust you when the league itself had been plagued with systemic abuse?

Well, I give a lot of credit to our owners, our board of governors. For those who don't know, the system and construct of professional sports leagues, the commissioner of the league reports to a group of owners, each of whom own their individual teams in their individual markets. And when the league was faced with what was an existential crisis, for those who don't recall, the best proxy for how bad it was is the reference to what Megan Rapinoe posted on social media, which was let period, it period, burn period, and it was the National Women's Soccer League. So it really was at a crossroads of asking itself whether it could or should continue to exist. And the board actually had me interview with the players. And for those who know professional sports leagues, that is quite uncommon. But I think mutually, it served as the beginning of trust building for me and our owners with our players. Really a direct invitation to them and a recognition of the respect that they deserve for having a role to play in building the future of the league. And the most important question that I asked in that conversation, because it really was a mutual interview, was If a leader is hired to rebuild this league that is worthy of your trust, do you want this league to be successful? And that was a really important question, threshold question for me to ask and understand because I could come in and do all the right things, but if they weren't prepared to turn the page and rebuild, then I wouldn't have had a willing partner in that journey. And it really prompted a lot of thought-provoking discussion for both of us that began the journey of repair.

I mean, you came and met with the Wall Street Journal Board of Directors Council last fall and you haven't stopped those meetings, correct? You're still meeting with the players and I think I remember you saying that, and this shows how far it's come, that the dialogue has now turned. They're asking you questions about the business, correct?

Yeah, that's right. So I made the decision at that time once I was offered the position and took the role that I would visit with every single team every season. So from 2022 until most recently and actually last weekend I was in Louisville, meeting with the team in Louisville. I go to every market and I sit in a room closed door, just me and the players. And it's a ask me anything. Making sure that the players know that I'm accessible. I put my cell phone number on the board and most people are like, "Oh my God, 450 players are going to be contacting you all the time."

Do they use it?

Some do, but it's not 450. And I think that is an important lesson in leadership, which is that if you provide people the avenue and the invitation to provide input, they're really going to respect that and not take advantage of it. And so maybe five to 10% of players reach out to me on a somewhat regular basis and it provides a really important avenue that builds trust with them, that they know they can use it if they need to. And those meetings that I have with players are invaluable to building our strategy, to identifying the thematic issues that we need to continue to address and work on because building trust is not a one and done. It is not a check the box. And yes, now the meetings thankfully have transitioned not to repair and backward looking conversations, but really-

To the building.

To the building and the forward looking conversations about how we're going to partner to build this league to potentially rival some of the best leagues in the world. We want to be thought of not as the best women's league or the best soccer league, but among the top leagues in the world. And we think that our ambitions are achievable.

So let's get into the operations for a moment. You know, we were joking about unglamorous decisions backstage a minute ago because I asked you, I said, "Who makes the call last night at the game if the air quality's so bad and you have to cancel a game?" You're like, "I do." But you didn't make that call. We see the headlines now, expansion, growing media rights, record attendance, rising valuations, dedicated stadiums, which we're going to come back to in a moment. What is one particularly unglamorous operational decision you had to make early on to set you on the track for those headlines?

I think unglamorous was a couple things come to mind. One example is you referenced 2022 and the systemic abuse and the cultural challenges that we had across our league. We had a 10-year investigation into the history of the league and we made a commitment to our players that we were going to release the report in its full form. That was very unglamorous. It was a very unpopular time for me personally and for the league, but I knew that that level of transparency and accountability was necessary to turn the page. I think another, I don't know if I would describe it as unglamorous, but challenging decision was our decision to eliminate the draft. You know, many of you who follow sports know that in American sports, it's used as a way to redistribute talent to create competitiveness in a league so that if you underperform in a season, you're going to be given high quality talent in the following season to be able to compete in the following year and gives fans a sense of hope and really creates redistribution across the league. We made the decision. I would say it was potentially an unpopular decision, but we made the decision to align with the global game and eliminate the draft, knowing that that level of innovation is necessary for us to compete in a global player labor market for talent where in the rest of the world, players are full free agents and we want them to know that they will have the same rights if they choose to come and play in the NWSL.

Was that your legal and labor background coming into play there? Because that's something someone with a pure sports marketing background might not have done.

Yeah, I think certainly my labor background plays a role in the way that I analyze and interrogate hard decisions and I use that word interrogate literally. The people who work closely with me know that I ask a lot of questions. I'm very curious. I sometimes say I live in fear of what I don't know. And that really drives a level of curiosity, intellectual curiosity about understanding both the intended, which are the obvious, and the unintended, which are the less obvious consequences of potential decision making. I'll actually reference one of my favorite thought leaders, Adam Grant, who we had the good fortune of having be the closing keynote at our all staff meeting yesterday. And talked about a decision-making framework that I think really resonated with me that I'll share to the extent it resonates with others, which is that, "When decisions are high stakes and irreversible, you really have to force yourself to go slower and interrogate."

Yeah.

"And when decisions are neither of those, so if they're either not high stakes and/or not irreversible, you can move quicker." And the elimination of the entry draft was both high stakes and irreversible. And so those kinds of decisions tend to be the ones that are the hardest and the most important.

So we touched on stadiums a minute. So let's go to stadiums. My colleague, Rachel Bockman, was talking about that in one of the last sessions, and she interviewed you few years ago, when Kansas City Current opened their first stadium. I've seen projections from at least one investor saying that 10 years from now, 60 to 70% of women's teams will have their own stadium. Do you agree with that?

I think 60 to 70% is probably the right number. But I don't think that means that in 20 years, it would be 100%. If that makes sense.

How important is it to the future of this sport to have that happen?

Yeah, I actually think about it from the perspective of putting us in a position where we're a respected partner and contributor to the community, which could result in us having our own purpose-built stadium. But it might also mean that we are a good partner to, for example, an MLS owner or that we have shared ownership. So I don't think it's always the right answer, but it's going to need to be the answer in circumstances where we don't have the ability to have influence over the fan experience, our player experience, and when we play. And so if we can solve for those three things and be a, I don't like to use the word tenant, I'll say a partner in a building, that could be a great solution. But where that can't be, where those three objectives can't be met, we are and are going to need to build our own purpose-built infrastructure. And a lot of that rationalization is happening in real time across our league because we have ownership that is investing literally hundreds of millions of dollars and the rate limiting factor to optimizing your business is your venue.

Yeah.

And so we need to put our clubs in a position to be able to grow their business and hopefully we could find good partners to work with along the way so we don't have to replicate or duplicate resources in communities where it might otherwise not be needed. But if we have to do that, we will.

Okay. I'm going to come to audience questions in just a moment, but I want to talk about another decision that got a lot of discussion about it, which was the high impact player rule. The decision to let clubs pay over-the-salary cap for star players. Some people call it the Rodman Rule. How do you think that decision is working out and what's going to be the long-term impact on the league?

Yeah. Well, so far so good. The rule, just to take a step back, was intended to put us in a position to attract and retain the best players in the world. You have to remember that the National Women's Soccer League is the best league in the world and has the best players. And we need to make sure that we are in a position to remain on our front foot to compete for top talent. And I always say to some of the leaders of other professional sports leagues in America, imagine a world where LeBron James could decide to go and play in another league. Like that's our lived reality in soccer. It's the reason it's the global game. It's the reason Americans this summer have been like, "Oh wow, this is like a religion." It's incredible. It's amazing. It's a differentiator that we believe will create a higher ceiling on our growth, but it also means that oftentimes we're in hand-to-hand combat to keep the best players or attract the best players. And we believe strongly in the cost certainty that is created through our salary cap. And I've often said that's a hill I will die on. I think it's incredibly important to the financial sustainability of our league and to create a competition where fans do not know the outcome of games before they begin. I don't really know how you build a professional sports league without that as your core value and we definitely have that. But it also means we have to provide mechanisms for our clubs to be able to compete with a growing labor market where investors are seeing the value in women's soccer in other countries. And so the high-impact player rule really gives essentially a second apron on our owner's ability to spend money and invest in players. And so it is capped in and of itself. So it's a second layer of a cap. And there's specific criteria or parameters that ensure that when those investments are being made in a player, the money is going to the right places. And that's what's going to ensure that it creates a return on investment for our owners.

One last quick question, just speaking about cultivating the next generation of fans. There was a lot of buzz surrounding your partnership. We even talked about it last year at our summit with former soccer player and podcaster Alex Cooper in her Unwell Network. That's been discontinued, that partnership with you all. There were some of the fans, there was some disgruntledness from the fans. What did you learn from that partnership and how will it impact your future efforts and partnerships to reach the next generation?

Yeah. Well, I think everyone should be able to agree that what Alex Cooper has built in her media network is nothing short of incredible. She's a visionary. She's incredibly innovative and she happens to be a former competitive soccer player. So from our perspective, that was a really good recipe or good ingredients for a partnership. And we're really proud of what we did together last year. It was specifically a short-term relationship and tied to a lot of the work that they were doing around her documentary, which came out last year, which really for the first time connected her brand to soccer. And so it wasn't really that it was discontinued. It was that it was intended to be a one year partnership. And we actually have connectivity with them, continuing in a more informal basis. But Alex's empire provides us with access to fans, potential fans that we know from our demographic data are exactly the kinds of people who would love the NWSL if they knew about us. And so we're going to continue to tap into audience segmentation like that on a sort of trial basis to continue to open the aperture of the entryways and pathways into the NWSL because we know like yesterday playing at City Field, that if we give an opportunity for new fans to discover the NWSL like we have with our partnership with CBS, like we have with our partnership with ESPN, that we'll be able to continue to force multiply our fan base.

Well, last night's show they will come. I'm going to open it up and see if there are any audience questions now. And also if anybody missed my colleague's, Suzanne Vranica's interview with Alex Cooper in Cannes this past summer, it's worth watching. Let me see anybody, any hands up there. There's one right there. The mic's coming to you. Please just introduce yourself and say who you're with before you ask your question.

Thank you. So, Matt Eisler with Latham and Watkins. And I know I said I'd ask you a softball, but sorry. The pay-to-play model in the US is heavily criticized and lots of folks think that it's driving talent like accretion in Europe and affecting competition. Is that true? And if there's a way to fix it, is that on the league or is that on the clubs?

Yeah, it's a great question. Well, first of all, I think we have to sort of acknowledge the reality of the US culture, which is built on the foundation of capitalism. It is inherently entrepreneurial. And anytime there's a gap in the marketplace, someone will take it and figure out how to monetize it. And that's what's happened in youth sports, unfortunately. And that's not unique to soccer, right? I spent a lot of my career working at other sports leagues. I like to say I'm sport agnostic, although soccer people don't like when I say that. I've worked in hockey and basketball and baseball and in any rooms in sporting in those leagues, they would be having the same conversation. It is a pay-to-play model in this country and anyone who denies that is just not recognizing the reality of the system that's been built, which is a multi-billion dollar industry in this country. I think if you're looking at it objectively, there are benefits and there are disadvantages. The benefits are that there's a lot of money getting poured into kids and the ones who get through, tend to be really incredible athletes. The disadvantages are that it is by definition a very narrow pool of people who can afford it. And it is so intense at developmentally inappropriate stages that you lose talent along the way. So the attrition that happens, whether you're eight, 10, 12, 14 is really a travesty. So I worry more about those two byproducts of our system than the attrition overseas. So I worry about the fact that we've created a narrow funnel that should be the widest at the base, which does not exist right now because youth sports, at an elite level, is essentially inaccessible if you live in an underserved or marginalized community. And I worry about attrition where there are kids who are 10 and 12 who have career ending injuries, who are quitting sport because it's not fun and who are only playing because they're trying to get a college scholarship or play pro and have lots of connectivity to the core values you learn as a kid playing the game. And that'll actually not only have an impact on all professional sports leagues in terms of talent acquisition, but also from a fan perspective because if these kids and these families are not having a positive experience in sport, it's ultimately going to affect how they appreciate and love the game. And so the role of the league is an important one. I think the answer to the question of what our role is, is a complicated answer that we're thinking a lot about. And in every sport, I think it looks a little bit different. But in our sport, it really requires us in US Soccer coming together to really map out the pyramid and identify the places where there needs to be more access and more parameters that restrict the way that these systems are being built and how kids are advancing through the system.

Thank you for that question. And Jessica, before we have to wrap, I want this audience to know, I mean, you like most people here, right, you live a life that is extraordinarily physically and cognitively demanding. Next week you are going to do what?

I'm climbing Mount Kilimanjaro with my 18-year-old son. And I think the fun fact is that I actually did this before. So I'm probably one of the few people in the world who will get to do it twice. But I was less than half my age. So I think it's going to feel a lot different this time. And as importantly or the thing I'm most excited about is that it was actually my son's idea to do it together. So I'm incredibly excited to have that as a forced break where I've been told there is actually not cell phone service on the mountains. So I'm a little bit stressed about that, but it will force a pause for me that is probably warranted and needed.

Well, when you get back, you can tell us which was harder. Hiking Mount Kilimanjaro or turning around the league. We'll find that out. Thank you so much, Jessica.

Thank you so much.

Inside the NWSL’s Growth Strategy With Commissioner Jessica Berman

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