EAST LANSING, Mich. — Michigan State’s women’s soccer team is among the best in America. As of Nov. 2, the Spartans are ninth in the United Soccer Coaches’ Top 25 and No. 12 in the NCAA’s RPI rankings.
Outside of the top-ranked hockey team, no varsity sport that is currently in-season at MSU is ranked higher among its peers.
But the players do not feel like they’re being paid like their status.
“It’s kind of unfortunate that all the focus [with NIL and revenue-sharing] is on the men’s side of it,” junior midfielder Bella Najera told WKAR Sports. “I think all the women’s sports here work really hard. Us, gymnastics, a bunch of the other teams, cross country, we’ve been elite in the past few years, and just trying to bring some more of that money into our programs would be nice.”
There is the reality that male sports, such as football and men’s basketball, are the main generators of revenue for the team’s athletic department. The Big Ten is in the middle of a media rights deal worth roughly $1 billion per year.
Michigan State at Nebraska football on Oct. 4 was nationally televised on FS1. When the Spartans’ women’s soccer team closed its regular season against the Cornhuskers on Oct. 26, it was behind a paywall that costs $12.99 per month to get by on Big Ten Plus.
“We know that they [football and men’s basketball] are the highest revenue sports,” Najera said. “But even just little things, little companies helping out, doing anything they can would really help us, too.”
Starting on July 1, the revenue sharing era also began. MSU and many other schools began to be allowed to distribute up to approximately $20.5 million directly to student-athletes. It’s a separate thing from NIL, as those deals are funded by companies or other third parties.
“As it relates to it now, really as we talk about the way athletes receive compensation is more through revenue sharing than through NIL,” women’s soccer Head Coach Jeff Hosler said. “When you have the [NIL] clearinghouse, you’re talking about, really, $599 deals, not thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars of deals.
Hosler’s specific number of $599 refers to the fact that every third-party NIL deal worth $600 or more must be approved by the College Sports Commission.
“While a program like ours or players like ours do have a national face, at the same time, it’s a little more challenging to secure those types of deals (worth thousands of dollars),” Hosler said.
There are some opportunities that players have been made available to, though. Senior defender Allie Mairn has done deals with CVS, Hollister, supplement brand iHerb, and sparkling water drink Bubbl’r. She also said that Yeti sent the whole team personalized water bottles and coolers that had their names and jersey numbers on it.
Hosler and Najera both said that MSU Federal Credit Union has been a notable supporter of the team. MSUFCU has a “Women of Sparta” program that supports every American women’s basketball player along with several other female athletes in other sports. International athletes are not allowed to receive money from their name, image, and likeness, due to Department of State student visa regulations.
“There’s definitely more opportunities as the years have gone on,” Mairn said. “As I think, when I was a freshman here, we didn’t really have many deals. I think we had one team deal that we don’t have anymore, but we had it [my] freshman and sophomore year, which was really nice.”
The deal that does not exist anymore was with an organization called Charitable Gift America. Dr. Thomas Dieters, a Michigan State baseball alumnus, is the board president of CGA. 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 team NIL deals right now,” Najera said. “It’s more individual. You have to reach out to companies and try to get your name out there.”
Najera said that Darien Harris, a former Assistant AD/Business Development and NIL Strategy for MSU Athletics was once a big help for the team in that realm. Harris left MSU in May to take a front office job with the NFL’s New York Giants.
Despite the loss of the CGA team-wide deal and Harris, some growth in the space is visible.
“I think the last two years, there’s been a lot more companies that have wanted to work with women’s soccer,” Mairn also said. “From my experience, too, there’s a lot of different platforms that I can be on that will kind of play the middleman role of getting us deals.”
Hosler noted that revenue-sharing complicates things, especially due to the lack of transparency about it, but still sees the signs of his program growing in popularity.
“At the bare minimum, what I do know is, our players in the community are recognized a lot more than they ever have been,” he said.