Kelley O’Hara is in her 14th season as a member of the U.S. women’s national team, and there is still plenty to cherish. There is the pride of representing her country, the camaraderie with teammates and the thrill of competition, but another aspect that brings O’Hara joy is just seeing a fan wearing a jersey with her name on the back.
“Every time I see someone with my jersey on, it is very special and very cool. I don’t take it for granted at all,” she told ESPN by phone recently. “I’m like, ‘Wow, this is incredible that someone would go out and buy my jersey and pick me,’ you know? It’s a very special thing to see fans wearing your jersey.”
With the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup just three months away, there is another reason O’Hara could enjoy that kind of validation: money. With the USWNT riding two consecutive World Cup titles, the team — through its players’ union, the USWNT Players Association, or USWNTPA — is flexing its commercial muscle in terms of name, image and likeness (NIL) rights, and that’s putting more money into players’ pockets.
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According to the USWNTPA and government filings for the 2019 fiscal year — the most recent year that included a World Cup — the union received royalty payments of just under $1 million. But that figure looks set to increase. USWNTPA executive director Becca Roux is hoping to double that amount in 2023, but some of that will be down to how the team performs. Everyone loves a winner, and even as reigning two-time World Cup champions, a third consecutive win this summer in Australia and New Zealand would drive interest in licensing further.
“The name recognition of many of our players, and not just the popularity of them as a team, is at a high level, and we want to build on that success with our partners to ensure that there is product easily available for all the fans that want to represent,” Roux told ESPN. “In addition, we want to utilize marketing and merchandise to tell the stories of the up-and-coming players, converting casual fans to loyalists and ensure stronger representation of all our membership in the market.”
There was a time where the players were doing a lot of the NIL work themselves in terms of evaluating deals with the likes of Meghan Klingenberg, Julie Ertz, Sam Mewis and O’Hara doing plenty of heavy lifting early on. But O’Hara notes that such demands have decreased over the years as the player union has added more staff, which has been made possible by more deals coming in.
“There’s just so much time and effort that’s been put in by so many different players and people. It didn’t come out of thin air,” said O’Hara. “But the goal was always to get it to a place where [the players’ association] runs itself. Players, we can play and we don’t have to be giving as much time. And I think we’re getting to that place and it is very gratifying to see that we’ve taken something very small and created this functioning robust players’ association with revenue driving it as well.”
For O’Hara, such developments contain a mix of frustration and joy. In her view, ramping up the commercial revenues took far too long. But there is momentum now that looks set to continue beyond the World Cup. The 2024 Summer Olympics in France are less than 18 months away. And the USWNTPA doesn’t plan on stopping there.
“I lean towards the look-at-the-glass-half-full type of viewpoint of most things,” O’Hara said. “Obviously it’s frustrating. We could have been doing this a while ago or right from the beginning. At the end of the day, I’m just happy that we banded together.”
