Just before 6 a.m. Jessica Berman lets her dogs out into her backyard. The National Womens Soccer League (NWSL) commissioner then makes a coffee, sits at her desk, and, before being drawn into the whirlpool of messages, when her mind is at its sharpest, tackles a tricky topic she has been avoiding.
This is my time to do something that I think is really important for the business, she told The Athletic from a London hotel, in the capital for Leaders Week in late September. Once she looks at her emails, its like whack-a-mole, just putting out fires all day.
At around 7 a.m. Berman then prioritizes her exercise, cycling on the Peloton, running, yoga, or doing her favorite workout, Barrys Bootcamp, before her official workday begins in the leagues Manhattan offices. The former National Hockey League (NHL) vice president typically returns home between 6 and 7 p.m., when she makes phone calls and sifts through her inbox.
Whenever she thinks about her day-to-day, North Carolina Courage player Tyler Lussi pops into her head. The forward once said she wanted to become the NWSL commissioner, and so Berman invited Lussi to shadow her for a day.
One day, the future NWSL commissioner will be a former player, thats my hope, said Berman.
Berman became commissioner in April 2022. Her contract was due to expire at the end of the year, but over the weekend, the leagues four-person executive committee voted to hand her a three-year extension, according to sources briefed on the negotiations.
In mid-September, regarding her contract renewal, Berman said she intends to be here. When The Athletic asked at the end of September what she meant, she said: Until my work is done, until I feel like I cant continue advancing the league based on the goals and objectives. We are just in the infancy of our growth. There is a lot more I have to give. So thats what I meant. I hope to be here for a long time.
Berman has overseen an increase in club valuations from $2 million in expansion fees to $110 million paid by Denver Summit FC earlier this year. She also helped make games more accessible by securing a four-year media deal in 2023, valued at a combined $60 million per year across the leagues four partners, CBS Sports, ESPN, Prime Video and Scripps Sports.
Berman lists key moments in her sights: next years mens World Cup, the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and the 2031 Womens World Cup, all hosted by the United States. Berman would like to be in place through it all.
There is a huge opportunity between now and 2031, she said. The NWSL has the benefit of being synonymous with greatness in the U.S in a global sport like soccer, which is so dominated by men and their narrative. Theres a lot we can do to penetrate the cultural zeitgeist that exists at the intersection of America and soccer.
The mens World Cup, which runs from June 11 to July 19 next year, overlaps with the NWSL season. The league will pause during the World Cup group stages but will resume when the knockouts start.
We will return to play the first weekend in July, said Berman. That was a really important strategic decision, albeit challenging facility-wise, that were going to show up with our actual game and fixtures.
The NWSL, our players, teams, and brand will be showing up side by side with the sport in and out of World Cup cities, she said of 2026, aware of the leagues need to be relevant when the world is paying attention to soccer in America.
It is a prime opportunity to promote the NWSL, which Berman believes is the best league in the world. Top to bottom, all our teams are competitive and among the top in the world, she said.
But the high-profile transfers of U.S. womens national team players Naomi Girma and Alyssa Thompson from the NWSL to the reigning Womens Super League (WSL) champions Chelsea, Emily Fox and Jenna Nighswonger joining Arsenal and Crystal Dunn signing for Paris Saint-Germain warrant attention.
Berman counters that argument by pointing to the additions of Lizbeth Jacqueline Ovalle for a world-record fee from Mexican club Tigres, Sofia Cantore from Juventus and Mia Fishel from Chelsea.
We are part of a global labor market for talent, she said. Not everyone will always be in the NWSL. We analyze every transfer window, and on a net basis, we bring in more top talent than we lose. Theres going to be competition for players; different players make different decisions for a host of reasons. Well want to win more than we lose.
If you look at our league top to bottom and the infrastructure and the investment around the first team consistently game over game, week over week, there is no league that provides the consistency of professionalism that exists across our 14 teams.
Part of that consistency comes from the NWSLs salary cap, which is much debated given that the rest of womens football does not have such self-imposed restrictions.
The latest NWSL collective bargaining agreement, approved in 2024, has increased the salary cap. The maximum for this season per squad is $3.3 million and will rise to $5.1 million by 2030. The minimum player salary for 2025 is $48,500 and will rise to $82,500 by 2030.
Berman maintains that the salary cap is vital for the leagues competitive balance.
The mechanism that will feed the growth of that salary cap is a revenue-sharing mechanism where we are business partners with our players, she said. There is no other league that has business partners with their players. The more revenue we generate at the league, the more our clubs spend on compensation. That allows us to build a league that is long-term, sustainable and viable, where the amount were investing has a rational relationship to revenue.
Berman puts the success from a business standpoint of the NBA, NFL, NHL and Major League Baseball down to competitive balance. Anyone can win any game; its the fuel that drives the growth of the business, which ultimately leads to players making millions and millions and millions of dollars, she said.
My goal is to grow our business to the point where these players can be making tons and tons of money and dont have to question whether the business is sustainable. Thats how were building the business.
And that brings us back to her leadership style, a question Berman was not expecting. She has been influenced by her parents, her mother a psychologist and her late father, a very scrappy entrepreneur business person who worked until the day he died, aged 83.
That is who I am in a nutshell, she said. I would like to see myself as leading with empathy and caring about people, thats my mums side, and someone driven by work ethic, my dads side. Even though he ran a massive business, no job was too big or small; he wanted to work with good people.
That resonates with Berman.
She believes her standout quality is her commitment to getting it right. Our work can change the world, she said. I believe that almost to a fault.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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