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Jeff Kassoff
multiple authors
The NWSL’s Board of Governors is expected to vote later this month on whether to switch the league’s calendar from a fall to spring season, multiple sources told ESPN.
The NWSL season currently starts in March and ends in November, but a change – which has been debated for years and previously voted on – would see the season start in the late summer and end in the late spring. This will align the NWSL with several of Europe’s top leagues, and soon with MLS, which will make a fall-to-spring transition next year.
The board of the NWSL has Debate over changing season footprint For at least three years, and a flip of the calendar in late 2024 was voted down by a slim margin, as ESPN previously reported. There is an intense debate going on in league circles on this topic.
Another vote on the calendar could take place at an upcoming board meeting, sources said, though agendas for such meetings often change, and the terms of potential resolutions could be changed by the time the vote begins. as they did in december With the implementation of the new High Impact Player rule.
Even if there is a vote that successfully passes the calendar change – which is not guaranteed, as support for the idea is not unanimous – it could take years to implement.
An NWSL spokesperson declined to comment for this story.
NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman said in November that “our ecosystem is on notice” about the league potentially changing its calendar.
“There are certainly opportunities that can be created by us not overlapping Major League Soccer, which would reduce schedule congestion for our summer calendar,” Berman said ahead of the 2025 NWSL Championship. “On the other hand, there will definitely be other challenges in terms of understanding and knowing the availability of the stadium.”
Supporters of the change believe that aligning the NWSL’s calendar with Europe will improve the transfer business and allow the NWSL to better work around FIFA international windows.
Sources told ESPN there is also a perception among some board members that there is less competition for prime TV time in the late spring and that the NWSL playoffs could have a larger audience in that window. Maximizing revenue from the next media rights deal is the NWSL board’s current top priority, multiple sources have told ESPN over the past year, and Berman has spoken frequently on the topic.
Critics of the calendar change point to the NWSL’s many cold-weather markets and potential player safety issues over holding games in cold conditions, although extreme heat is already an issue during the NWSL’s summer months. They are also concerned about how colder temperatures and potential season delays will affect attendance, which dropped to an average low last year.
The NWSL Board of Governors will meet later this month. Any potential league vote would likely result in a narrow decision in either direction, as was the case in 2024.
MLS owners voted in November To turn the calendar and reflect on Europe. MLS will make the change by playing an abbreviated “sprint season” next spring before switching to a full season in 2027–28. MLS will begin its new season in July, take a winter break from mid-December to early February and conclude the playoffs in late May.
The NWSL could follow a similar path but on a delayed timeline.
The NWSL’s new collective bargaining agreement, approved in 2024, accounts for the potential change by removing restrictions on preseason start dates and adding an entire section (27.9) accounting for changes in the schedule format. That section requires the league to give at least one year’s notice to the NWSL Players Association if it intends to switch to a fall-to-spring format.
after this, cba There are calls for the league and union to form a scheduling committee and allow NWSLPA input, as well as bargaining over necessary changes that conflict with the current CBA, “but the NWSL retains the discretion to make changes to the format.”
There are natural breaks in the calendar to attempt changes in the NWSL. The 2028 Summer Olympics will take place in Los Angeles (and Olympic soccer competition extends throughout the Americas), and the 2031 Women’s World Cup is expected to be held primarily in the United States, although formal approval of that uncontested bid by FIFA has been delayed.
The calendar change is supported by many sports officials across the league as it would put NWSL contracts on the same level as contracts in Europe, where deals typically expire in the summer. Officials have said for years that this would make it easier for players to transfer.
at espn First anonymous general manager survey In 2024, one GM said the intense debate over the calendar was “really the biggest question facing the league.”
Turning the summer into an offseason would also help the NWSL avoid one of its biggest headaches: international tournaments. The league tried to play in the 2015 and 2019 Women’s World Cups despite lacking star players before taking a five-week break for the 2023 edition.
Between continental tournaments such as the World Cup, the Olympics and the Euros, major international calendar clashes occur in three out of every four summers. (And this year, one summer into that cycle, the NWSL took a month-long break as the Men’s World Cup took over many of its venues and markets.)
MLS and the NWSL currently mirror each other in operating seasons that begin at the beginning of the calendar year (usually February or March) and end with playoffs that run through the end of the year. Both MLS and the NWSL have started their seasons at the beginning of the calendar year since their inception in 1996 and 2013, respectively.
The USL Super League, which is sanctioned alongside the NWSL as the U.S. Women’s First Division, launches in 2024 and is already running a roughly fall-to-spring schedule, starting in August and ending in May.
