Angel City FC and the impending salary cap compliance Armageddon
The NWSL sent a warning shot to GMs around the league after Angel City FC ran afoul of the salary cap in 2023 and 2024.
Angel City FC recently made waves when Bob Iger and Willow Bay purchased the controlling stake of ACFC at a valuation of $250 million. The NWSL is growing quickly but this was still a surprising valuation with Angel City - at the time - having no stakes in BMO Stadium, a deal with Cal Lutheran for training time, and no post-season success up to this point.
ACFC is working on their training situation, and has recently received minority investment from LAFC, but that final point may take some time.
On the edge of playoff contention this season, their push has been completely derailed as the NWSL front office fined the club $200,000 and deducted three points in the 2024 standings after a recent investigation uncovered salary cap violations during the 2023 season.
The punishment comes on the heels of an anonymous GM survey conducted by Jeff Kassouf and ESPN that saw 79% of GMs answering “No” to the prompt, “Do you think every NWSL team’s Front Office follows league rules?”.
The NWSL very obviously found those answers interesting as the league announced further investigations into compliance along with ACFC’s punishment.
“Following a thorough review, the NWSL has determined that ACFC violated multiple league rules. Key findings from the investigation include:
During calendar year 2023, ACFC entered into five side letters directly with players that effected multi-year agreements and were not disclosed to the league. These agreements included a combination of compensation and benefits that were reflected in the Standard Player Agreement and excess benefits that were neither reported to the league nor included in the Standard Player Agreement.
Due to these undisclosed benefits, ACFC exceeded the salary cap by approximately $50,000 for four weeks during the 2024 season.
The NWSL is committed to upholding the integrity of its salary cap and player compensation rules. As such, the following disciplinary measures will be implemented:
ACFC will be fined $200,000.
A deduction of three (3) points from ACFC’s 2024 standings, effective immediately.
Julie Uhrman, President and CEO, and Angela Hucles Mangano, General Manager, are suspended, effective immediately, from conducting duties relating to any player transactions for the remainder of the 2024 calendar year.
In addition, the NWSL will be conducting annual investigations and audits of player spending across clubs to ensure compliance with league rules.”
This is a big data point for the idea that all salary data should be made public, if nothing else than to encourage visibility and compliance.
However, this punishment, and the idea that the NWSL is pulling back the doors and busting open the books doesn’t inherently mean that they will find malfeasance elsewhere in the league as much as rival fans want to point to Gotham’s summer of spending.
Angel City’s roster construction has always been head scratching. Their young players are some of the highest paid young players in the league, and they occupy that blurry middle ground where they relied on too many voices that had a lack of GM experience, especially at the NWSL level.
Eni Aluko, the club’s first Sporting Director, was hired after just one season as Aston Villa’s Director of Football, before pivoting to Angela Hucles who had even less experience in the role.
Hucles’s guidance is what found the NWSL at the club’s doorstep again, suspending the GM along with President and CEO Julie Uhrman for the rest of 2024.
It’s hard to see a scenario where new ownership comes in and passes on the opportunity to start from scratch with the club’s front office. The club would be better for it, to wash off the hubris of start-up culture that is embedded in their DNA, and lean more heavily into LA soccer’s DNA.
ACFC should be leading the way in the NWSL, it’s the league’s second largest market, and has already cultivated a passionate fanbase, but they’ve been wasteful of their headstart over other expansion clubs like Bay FC and San Diego.
Some will say that the amount of GMs who perceive other clubs as bending league rules is proof that ACFC shouldn’t be made an example of, but the rules are the rules.
If GMs truly feel that the only way to compete in the league - and with the giants of Europe - is to pay players outside of their typical contracts then perhaps it is time to revisit those rules.
However, it’s worth noting that the salary cap will already be increasing to at least $5.1 million by 2030 after the most recent round of CBA negotiations.
These corrections are a good thing, the NWSL is growing quickly, and the league must ensure that everyone is playing by the same set of guidelines. Luckily for the league, ACFC has largely been unsuccessful, but the punishment is a warning to the league’s most ambitious clubs.