She Kicks Investigates: How Are Player Contracts In Women’s Football Changing?

Four people who negotiate for a living describe how contracts in the women’s game are changing. Ella Masar, a former USA international turned agent, predicts a first million-dollar contract within two or three years and points to Everton paying a club-record six-figure fee for the eighteen-year-old Hanna Bennison. Signing-on bonuses of ten to twenty thousand pounds are new in the last two or three years; she was drafted in 2009 and got, she says, a scarf and a hug. FIFPRO’s Sarah Gregorius sets out the January 2021 maternity regulations and a case in which a FIFA tribunal rejected a Bulgarian club’s claim that women could not be professionals. Image rights remain rare, and top players still earn more from social media than from their clubs.