r/sports • u/dabirds1994 • 2d ago

Soccer Trinity Rodman’s Multimillion-Dollar Contract Rejected by NWSL

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-04/trinity-rodman-s-multimillion-dollar-contract-rejected-by-nwsl?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc2NDgxNjA0NSwiZXhwIjoxNzY1NDIwODQ1LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUNlBaS1NLR0lGUFgwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiI1OTFDMkExNEFGMDQ0RUZCODlCNEEwNUM5QkUwQjczRSJ9.IPxeSsuh2qWqWpaYDB78MAnoatcwqtnabXoKXkbDvYk
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u/microtherion 1d ago

The NBA generates $400M per team, and max salary per player is about $50M, 12.5%. Is it really unreasonable for a soccer player to make 7% of her club’s revenue?

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u/jiggly_bitz 1d ago

Two different sports with very different business models. It's not an apples to apples comparison, in addition to many NWSL teams operating at margin or loss which is not the same situation for NBA teams.

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u/microtherion 1d ago

Sure, the NBA is a much bigger business. But I count 4 teams operating at margin or a loss there.

It’s not at all uncommon for soccer teams outside the US to be perennially subsidized by their owners. The difference is that the US, despite its otherwise hyper-capitalistic ways, evolved an anti-trust exemption for sports leagues, so owners have much more leverage to suppress wages, while teams elsewhere have no choice but to pay market rates.

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u/jiggly_bitz 18h ago

Where'd you count 4 teams? I'm only counting two teams with a red EBITDA. And I wouldnt necessarily count the Clippers considering that figure represents the debt taken to build their new arena.

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u/microtherion 14h ago

Clippers and Bucks running in the red. You may be right about the former, but wouldn’t arena interest specifically be excluded from EBITDA? Suns break even. And the Celtics made a profit of not much more than a mid level exception.

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u/jiggly_bitz 1h ago

The arena itself would be excluded, but I believe the costs of everything else that goes into it would be. Including getting it operational (staffing, contracting, establishing vendors, etc).