List of most expensive women's association football transfers

The following is a list of most expensive women's association football transfers, which details the highest transfer fees ever paid for players, as well as transfers which set new world transfer records.

The first compensated transfer of a female footballer was of Molly Walker, from Lancaster Ladies to Dick, Kerr Ladies in 1918; Walker was offered expenses paid as well as payment in lieu for joining the team. The first transfer in women's football reported as a record was that of Milene Domingues from Fiammamonza to Rayo Vallecano in 2002, two decades before professionalism in Spanish women's football.

The current transfer record was set by the transfer of Keira Walsh from Manchester City to Barcelona for £400,000 in September 2022.

Highest transfer payments in women's association football
Sofie Svava and Jill Roord appear twice on the list. The players on the list include at least one from each continental region except Oceania (OFC): Europe (UEFA), North America (CONCACAF), South America (CONMEBOL), Africa (CAF), Asia (AFC). However, most are European; the purchasing clubs are all European, North American, or Asian. Most of the top ten (including all of those who achieved world-record fees) are midfielders.

This list only includes transfers where a fee amount is reported publicly. Fees are in thousands.

Most expensive player by confederation

Women's football transfer record 
The first transfer fee for a women's footballer known to be reported as a world record was the £200,000 ($310,000; €235,000) paid for Milene Domingues in 2002. At the time, there was little to no money in women's football due to limited number of professional leagues and financial news focused on player salaries; Domingues received greater attention for the reported record salary she was to receive, though she ended up never playing for Rayo Vallecano, the club that signed her, due to non-Spanish players being unable to play in the Spanish women's league at the time. However, Domingues was not a particularly skilled player, instead being a popular figure as the personable wife of Ronaldo, and her record signing was made more for promotional reasons. She fulfilled promotional duties at Rayo while returning to play for her previous team, Fiammamonza, without salary.

This transfer sum was not overtaken until September 2020, when Pernille Harder was bought by Chelsea for £250,000 ($334,000; €280,000). When, almost a year prior to Harder's transfer, Sam Kerr had also moved to Chelsea, focus was still on her large salary. In beating the near 20-year record by her transfer, Harder said she hoped it would help start to show that women's football can also be a club business like men's football and receive more money.

Harder gave similar comments when her record was beaten two years later by Barcelona buying Keira Walsh from Manchester City for £400,000 ($457,000; €470,000) in September 2022. Walsh instead was coy, saying she did not think about the record much, that she wanted to play at the club and "it just so happens that's what they paid for [her]." The Athletic and BBC Sport wrote that Walsh's transfer "shifted the ecosystem", having a significant impact on the market of women's football, that it showed "even the top clubs are not immune to the risk of losing their best players to rivals who are now willing to spend". It marked exponential growth for the transfer market; spending in transfer windows had been growing, with the winter 2021–22 window setting a then-record for global transfers in one season at a total of around £364,000 ($488,000; €432,000). Walsh's fee alone in the summer 2022 window eclipsed this, with further high transfer fees being paid as a domino effect supplementing the season total.

The transfer was predicated on the growing popularity of women's football and its players in England and Spain; with Walsh's fee having shown the financial power of this growth, fees continued accelerating in such markets. In the next transfer window, Bethany England transferred (to Tottenham Hotspur from Chelsea) for a fee that equalled Harder's previous record, and Arsenal made two offers, both rejected, for Manchester United striker Alessia Russo that would have both been a new world record. Following these and a slew of other six-figure transfer fees in England's Women's Super League (WSL) in 2023, some WSL managers criticised the rapid spending growth of the larger clubs; in September 2023, England's head of women's football, Baroness Sue Campbell, said that future limits on spending would be introduced.

Record progression

NWSL allocation money

The American National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) has a single-entity structure that resembles Major League Soccer and domestic transaction rules that differ from other global leagues. NWSL players are contracted to the league itself rather than the clubs to which the league has assigned them. Before the 2020 NWSL season, the league introduced allocation money, a cash-equivalent credit that clubs can purchase from the league. Allocation money can be used to exceed the league salary cap, fund club operations, or pay fee-involved loans and transfers for players outside of the league. Clubs can trade credits like other non-cash league assets. A significant number of players in the NWSL then began being traded for allocation money.

NWSL trades – including those for allocation money – have different principles both economically and holistically than domestic transfers in other leagues: domestic loans and transfers in the NWSL do not require player consent or a change of contract, as they are employed by the league which assigns them; allocation money trades can also involve non-cash assets with no equivalent monetary value (such as other players, NWSL Draft picks, international roster spots, and the right to initiate negotiations with a player who is not already under contract with the NWSL); and no real currency is exchanged between transfer clubs, as the allocation money is a credit managed by the NWSL itself.

The NWSL also limits the amount of allocation money a team can acquire in one season, though allows teams to retain purchased but unused allocation money credits in subsequent seasons. Additionally, teams have traded players for credits they would acquire in future seasons.

Largest allocation money trades
Only transactions involving more than $100,000 are listed.

Victoria Pickett and Crystal Dunn appear in this list twice, the latter for two allocation money-involved trades in one day as part of a three-team transaction. The largest allocation-money transaction was $350,000, traded to acquire the 2nd-overall pick in the 2023 NWSL Draft, which NJ/NY Gotham FC then traded to Kansas City Current for Lynn Williams. The Current used the pick to select Michelle Cooper.

Spain Compensation List
For the 2020 season, Spain introduced the "Compensation List", part of a wider agreement between women's football clubs as a step towards professionalism; intended to compensate the expenses of youth training when young players joined senior clubs, the Compensation List ruled that players under the age of 23 could only transfer between Spanish clubs for a fee, even when their contract is expired. The club they were to leave would set an asking price, and if no other club was willing to pay (and the player did not move to a club outside of Spain), the original club had to re-sign the player with a salary increase matching a percentage of the asking price. There were criticisms of the Compensation List, as few clubs wanted to pay and it was seen to encourage young talents to leave the country.

Before the Compensation List was accepted, a lawsuit seeking to prevent it was brought by Spanish players' union Futbolistas ON, arguing that it should be invalid due to not having been negotiated within labour agreements and due to being used as a disguised retention fee. Though the Court approved the Compensation List, it upheld that clubs which had not taken part in its negotiation (Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Athletic Club) could not use the Compensation List, and that cases of "disproportion" should have individual appeals (based on European litigation involving French clubs). The highest fees set on the Compensation List were for Eva Navarro and Ona Batlle of Levante, each for €500,000, and Maite Oroz and Damaris Egurrola of Athletic Club, each for €250,000 – at the time the fees were set (ahead of the summer 2020 transfer window), all would have broken the world record. Oroz and Egurrola had already announced their plans to depart Athletic Club, and so the high fees were seen as punitive; Oroz had already signed for Real Madrid before the court case, with Real Madrid not wanting to pay the fee being one reason it was brought. As neither club was involved in negotiations, the fee was deemed invalid.

By the end of 2020, after Batlle left the country and Navarro had been without a club until returning to Levante against her wishes, Spanish clubs agreed to limit the fees set on the Compensation List in order to prevent abuse. The agreement that had created the List expired at the end of the season.

See also
Professionalism in women's association football
List of world association football records
List of most expensive association football transfers

Notes
 In player transfers between the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and other leagues, the NWSL as a single-entity organization conducts the transaction and pays or receives any fees, rather than member clubs conducting the deal directly. NWSL clubs fund transactions by purchasing allocation money credits from the league, which can be traded between NWSL clubs or acquired from the league through non-financial means. Such transfers into the league are subject to FIFA transfer regulations. Once in the league, international players can be subject to different rules for domestic transfers within the NWSL.

References

Lists of most expensive association football transfers
Transfers
Expense
Transfers
Transfers
Association football transfers