EAST LANSING, Mich. — The Michigan State women’s soccer team is among the best in America. As of November 2, the Spartans are ninth in the standings. Top 25 United Soccer coaches and No. 12 in the NCAA RPI rankings.
Outside of the top-ranked hockey team, no varsity sport currently in season at MSU is higher ranked among its peers.
But the players do not have the impression of being paid commensurate with their status.
“It’s a little unfortunate that all the attention (with NIL and revenue sharing) is on the men’s side,” junior midfielder Bella Najera told WKAR Sports. “I think all the women’s sports here work really hard. We, gymnastics, a number of other teams, cross country, we’ve been elite the last few years, and trying to get a little more money into our programs would be nice.”
It is true that men’s sports, such as football and men’s basketball, are the primary revenue generators for the team’s athletic department. The Big Ten is in the middle of a media rights agreement worth about $1 billion per year.
Michigan State football at Nebraska on October 4 was televised nationally on FS1. When the Spartans women’s soccer team closed out its regular season against the Cornhuskers on Oct. 26, it was behind a paywall that costs $12.99 a month to get by on Big Ten Plus.
“We know that (football and men’s basketball) are the sports that generate the highest revenue,” Najera said. “But even small things, small businesses that help us, that do whatever they can, would really help us too.”
From July 1, the era of revenue sharing also began. MSU and many other schools began being allowed to distribute up to about $20.5 million directly to student-athletes. This is a separate thing from NIL, as these transactions are financed by companies or other third parties.
“As it relates to the topic at hand, the way athletes receive compensation is more through revenue sharing than NIL,” said women’s soccer head coach Jeff Hosler. “When you have the (NIL) clearinghouse, you’re really talking about $599 transactions, not thousands or tens of thousands of dollars worth of transactions.
Hosler’s specific figure of $599 refers to the fact that every NIL transaction with a third party worth $600 or more must be approved by the University Sports Commission.
“Even though a program like ours or players like ours have a national face, at the same time it’s a little harder to make those kinds of deals (worth several thousand dollars),” Hosler said.
However, there are certain opportunities that players have access to. Senior defender Allie Mairn has deals with CVS, Hollister, supplement brand iHerb and soda water drink Bubbl’r. She also said Yeti sent the entire team personalized water bottles and coolers with their names and jersey numbers on them.
Both Hosler and Najera said MSU Federal Credit Union was a notable supporter of the team. MSUFCU has a “Women of Sparta” program that supports all American women’s basketball players as well as several other female athletes in other sports. International athletes are not allowed to receive money based on their name, image and likeness, due to State Department student visa regulations.
“There are definitely more opportunities as the years go by,” Mairn said. “Like I think, when I was a freshman here, we didn’t really have a lot of contracts. I think we had a team contract that we don’t have anymore, but we had it (my) freshman and sophomore year, which was really nice.”
The deal that no longer exists was with an organization called Charitable Gift America. Dr. Thomas Dieters, a Michigan State baseball alumnus, is the Chairman of the CGA Board of Directors. According to the organization’s website, CGA also has NIL collectives at other schools, including Oakland, Central Michigan, Kansas, South Florida, Central Florida and a few others.
“Honestly, we don’t have any NIL agreement with the team at the moment,” Najera said. “It’s more individual. You have to contact companies and try to get your name out there.”
Najera said Darien Harris, former assistant AD/business development and NIL strategy for MSU Athletics, was once a big help to the team in that area. Harris left MSU in May to take a front office position with the NFL’s New York Giants.
Despite losing the CGA and Harris team-wide deal, some growth in the sector is visible.
“I think in the last couple of years a lot more companies have wanted to work with women’s football,” Mairn also said. “In my experience as well, there are a lot of different platforms that I can be on that will sort of act as a middleman to get us deals.”
Hosler noted that revenue sharing complicates things, particularly because of the lack of transparency about it, but he still sees signs of his program’s growing popularity.
“At a minimum, what I know is that our players in the community are recognized a lot more than they’ve ever been,” he said.
