Carolyn Tisch Blodgett wants the NWSL (National Women's Soccer League) to keep its stars without handing owners an open-ended payroll bill.
On October 23, the league and its players' union struck a deal that leaves her preferred approach standing, with more room to pay talent and a firm spending limit still wrapped around it.
From January 1, 2027, the settlement strips out the awards, rankings, and marketing tests attached to the High Impact Player rule. The extra spending pool survives, though, and so does the hard cap. To put it simply, players gain more freedom to negotiate their worth, while owners keep a ceiling on the check.
Meanwhile, five weeks earlier, Tisch Blodgett, Gotham FC's governor and co-owner and a New York Giants co-owner, explained her thinking at Front Office Sports' Asset Class event in New York. She backed the star-player exception, often called the Rodman Rule, and pointed to the NFL as the reason to keep spending controls in place.
Why a Giants Owner Believes in the Cap
For Tisch Blodgett, competitive balance helps sell the whole league, and at the September event, she explained why a fighting chance for every market keeps fans watching.
"The idea that the Green Bay Packers can beat the L.A. Rams on any given Sunday is key to the NFL. It's what keeps people watching every year. A salary cap and a competitive balance is a really big part of that," Tisch Blodgett said.
For perspective, the NFL's cap started at $34.6 million in 1994 and has grown to $301.2 million in 2026. In other words, owners pay far more as the business grows but still work within a shared limit. For an investor, knowing the payroll ceiling makes planning much less of a guessing game.
The NWSL plays the same game on a much smaller budget. Its 2026 base cap is $3.5 million, and revenue sharing lifts the ordinary allowance to $3.7 million. On top of that, the HIP rule adds up to $1 million per club, which can support one qualifying player or several. Here's the catch, though: clubs must reach the ordinary cap before they can touch that extra money, so owners can compete for stars without opening every salary negotiation to unrestricted spending.
The Problem the NFL Never Had to Solve
But soccer bends that model in a way football never has. The NFL faces no overseas league bidding for its best quarterbacks on comparable terms, while NWSL clubs compete against employers operating under different rules, and their players can take their talent elsewhere.
Case in point: Chelsea signed Naomi Girma from San Diego in January 2025 and Alyssa Thompson from Angel City that September. To be fair, those moves do not prove that salary limits drove either decision, since sporting ambition and the working environment also enter the picture. Even so, they show that an American club's budget cannot set the price for the whole world.
Then there's England's Women's Super League, which has spending controls of its own. Its rules permit player costs of 80% of relevant revenue, plus qualifying cash funding capped at the higher of £4 million or 25% of that revenue. In short, income and owner support give WSL clubs different spending room, while every NWSL club shares the same base cap.
Tisch Blodgett knows what losing recognizable players would cost, and at Asset Class, she tied the league's appeal to their presence.
"What's really clear in sports right now is that stars are driving interest. You can't build one of the best leagues in the world if you don't have stars," Tisch Blodgett said.
Inside the Rodman Fight
The real fight started over who gets access to the extra money. When owners proposed the special fund in December 2025, the union wanted the same money added to the ordinary cap so clubs could use it across their rosters. Executive director Meghann Burke laid out that alternative at the time.
"Our position is simply, take that million dollars and move it into the team's salary cap so that teams have flexibility and the opportunity to spend it where they see fit in order to be competitive," Burke said.
The league went another way. It introduced an exception tied to eight sporting or commercial tests, including individual honors and media rankings. The union answered with a grievance in January, arguing that the league had changed compensation rules without collective bargaining. In other words, the disagreement covered two questions at once: who could earn more and who had the authority to decide.
Meanwhile, Washington used the mechanism to retain Trinity Rodman. Her three-year deal, announced January 22, reportedly pays more than $2 million annually, including bonuses. The $1 million exception only supplements ordinary cap room. It is neither her entire salary nor an automatic personal allowance, and because her full contract accounting remains private, dividing the reported package neatly between those categories would be guesswork.
For Rodman, staying also meant continuing her career somewhere familiar, as she explained in Washington's announcement.
"I've made the DMV my home and the Spirit my family, and I knew this was where I wanted to enter the next chapter of my career," Rodman said.
Keeping Rodman in Washington gave the league a result to celebrate. On the flip side, Gotham's Midge Purce challenged the price attached to that success. Speaking on Front Office Sports' Portfolio Players podcast in May, she argued that the rule still undervalued Rodman.
"I actually said my issue with the rule was I think she's worth more than what that rule allows her to make," Purce said.
Purce also objected to media rankings deciding who qualifies, since a player could command a strong offer without appearing on an approved list. Ironically, Gotham itself used HIP funds for Rose Lavelle and Emily Sonnett, so her own club benefited from a mechanism its players wanted changed.
As it turns out, October's settlement takes care of the eligibility problem. From January, any player can qualify at a salary of at least 12% of the base cap, although the league keeps the power to limit HIP designations per club. The deal also requires financial disclosures to verify revenue sharing. In short, players gain access and oversight, while owners keep their spending controls.
Burke, however, stressed the union's right to negotiate compensation rules when she explained the settlement.
"Our position is and always has been that the HIP Rule required collective bargaining, not consultation," Burke said.
League executive vice president Bill Ordower stressed competitive balance instead.
"This agreement gives the players, clubs and league greater clarity and certainty moving forward, while protecting the integrity and competitive balance that is fundamental to the NWSL," Ordower said.
How Gotham Plans to Earn More
For Tisch Blodgett, the next challenge is turning growing interest into dependable income.
Forbes values Gotham at $190 million, up 73% in a year, against just $11 million in 2025 revenue, and it reports that no NWSL club is believed to have broken even.
A valuation reflects what investors expect down the road, while revenue shows what comes through the door today, so players can point to soaring values while owners point to thin income.
Look no further than Queens for Gotham's plan to close that gap. The club's 2028 move to the 25,000-seat Etihad Park, shared with NYCFC, offers a route to more ticket and premium-seat sales.
Access by the 7 train and the Long Island Rail Road should help attract fans who find the current New Jersey trip difficult. Of course, easier access still has to produce paying customers.
Gotham has started selling that future. The club launched suite sales October 21 and reported deposits from more than 5,000 new fans. Deposits signal demand, but completed ticket purchases will show how much cash follows.
Nonetheless, its 27,000-square-foot training facility in Whippany targets completion in summer 2027, improving what Gotham can offer players beyond their paychecks.
Next year's base cap rises to $4.4 million, which puts the 12% threshold at $528,000, while the HIP pool grows proportionately to about $1.257 million.
Gotham must recruit within those limits while it sells its future home. Bottom line: Tisch Blodgett gets the cost certainty she supports, but keeping stars will also depend on whether those permitted salaries can compete with offers from Europe.