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The American National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) has a single-entity structure that resembles Major League Soccer and domestic transaction rules that differ from other global leagues. NWSL players are contracted to the league itself rather than the clubs to which the league has assigned them. Before the 2020 NWSL season, the league introduced allocation money, a cash-equivalent credit that clubs can purchase from the league. Allocation money can be used to exceed the league salary cap, fund club operations, or pay fee-involved loans and transfers for players outside of the league. Clubs can trade credits like other non-cash league assets. A significant number of players in the NWSL then began being traded for allocation money.
NWSL trades – including those for allocation money – have different principles both economically and holistically than domestic transfers in other leagues: domestic loans and transfers in the NWSL do not require player consent or a change of contract, as they are employed by the league which assigns them;: 5 allocation money trades can also involve non-cash assets with no equivalent monetary value (such as other players, NWSL Draft picks, international roster spots, and the right to initiate negotiations with a player who is not already under contract with the NWSL); and no real currency is exchanged between transfer clubs, as the allocation money is a credit managed by the NWSL itself.: 6–7
The NWSL also limits the amount of allocation money a team can acquire in one season, though allows teams to retain purchased but unused allocation money credits in subsequent seasons. Additionally, teams have traded players for credits they would acquire in future seasons.
In 2024, the NWSL announced that it would begin to phase out allocation money with the plan to stop using it altogether at the end of 2026, citing exponential financial growth in foreign leagues as the reason it considered allocation money obsolete. At the same time, the NWSL also implemented an intra-league transaction fee system, a net transfer fee threshold of $500,000 for both intra- and inter-league transfers, and an additional 25-percent salary cap charge against net transfer fees exceeding $500,000.
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