The U.S. Women’s National Team could be done with their fight for equal pay. For the Women’s World Cup, FIFA offered a prize pool of $150 million, compared to $440 million available for the men last winter. The winners for the women’s tournament would earn $4.3 million, as opposed to the Argentina men’s team, which won $42 million last year. The female losers would receive $1.6 million, while the losing men got $9 million. Addressing this issue, “FIFA hopes to be able to offer equal prize pools,“ said FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
The problem is that FIFA is not receiving enough offers for the Women’s World Cup prize pool donations. The irony is that FIFA was not charging as much for broadcasters to cover the women’s event, even sometimes offering it as a free add-on for mens coverage. When this issue was spoken out about, U.S. soccer was initially willing to equalize payments except for the World Cup, however after further deliberation, they said that they could not offer equal bonuses at all due to the large profit gap between the two national teams. In the last World Cup, the men had the potential to win a maximum of $30 million, while the women could have only gotten $6 million. In 2019, the USWNT sued U.S. soccer for $67 million, and U.S. soccer fought back by claiming that equal pay would bankrupt the federation.
Last year the USMNT and USWNT came together for a historic deal when they chose to pool their prize money and split it. “For instance, the U.S. men won around $13 million from FIFA for reaching the round of 16 at the World Cup in Qatar last year. When the women suffered a historic early exit and got knocked out in the round of 16 of this past Women’s World Cup, they would have won around $1.9 million. However, after pooling that money together with the men’s money, and after giving 10 percent to U.S. Soccer to support youth programs, the USWNT actually received around $6.7 million, which was more money than FIFA awarded Spain, the champion of the tournament ($4.3 million)”, says ESPN. Therefore, in theory, there is no need for the USWNT to keep advocating for equal pay, because they have surpassed the amount that any women’s team has ever gotten. However, many other women’s national teams across the globe who are not splitting prizes with their male counterparts are still suffering large pay disparities.
