The U.S. Soccer Federation may pay its female players significantly more than its male players, contradicting claims made by members of the U.S. women’s national team.
Members of the U.S. women’s soccer team filed a class action lawsuit against the federation in March over alleged pay discrepancies between men and women. U.S. Soccer Federation President Carlos Cordeiro wrote an open letter on Monday acknowledging that male and female players are paid differently, but said the difference actually favors women.
“When the lawsuit was filed, we made a deliberate decision — instead of debating the facts in the media in the lead-up to the World Cup, we would focus on providing the team with everything they needed to win in France,” Cordeiro wrote. The U.S. women’s national team beat the Netherlands 2-0 on June 7.
“U.S. Soccer has, over the past decade, paid our Women’s National Team more than our Men’s National Team in salaries and game bonuses,” Cordeiro said, citing figures in a financial analysis of the men’s and women’s pay structures he commissioned in the wake of the lawsuit and gave to an independent accounting firm for review.
According to the federation’s fact sheet, the pay structures for the men’s and women’s national teams differ because each team’s union negotiated separate agreements. The women’s team negotiate a deal with a guaranteed salary of $167,500-$172,500 per year between playing for both the national team and in the National Women’s Soccer League, not counting game and tournament bonuses.
U.S. male professional players are paid from game and tournament bonuses only with no base salary. Their bonuses are larger than the women’s, but the men are not guaranteed a paycheck.
“Above and beyond the guaranteed salaries mentioned above, U.S. Soccer provides our women players with a robust package of benefits that are not provided to the men. These benefits include fully-paid health, dental and vision insurance; severance; a 401(k) retirement plan; paid maternity leave; guaranteed injury protection; and assistance with childcare,” the fact sheet says.
In a hypothetical scenario in which each team plays 20 scrimmages, used to show the alleged pay gap between women and men, the female soccer players actually make more than the men under the current contracts.
“If the men and women ever did play in and win 20 friendlies in a year and were paid the average bonus amount, a women’s player would earn more from U.S. Soccer than the men’s player — the women’s player would earn at least $307,500 (WNT and NWSL salaries, plus game bonuses) and the men’s player would earn $263,333 (game bonuses only),” the fact sheet says.
The major pay gap lies in what FIFA, the international soccer federation, pays men’s and women’s teams. In 2018, the FIFA Men’s World Cup awarded $38 million to the winning team compared to the $4 million that FIFA awarded the women’s world champion U.S. team in 2019. The pay gap is due to “vastly different revenue” generated by the men’s and women’s world tournament.
“More specifically, WNT games have generated a net profit (ticket revenues minus event expenses) in only two years (2016 and 2017). Across the entire 11-year period, WNT games generated a net loss of $27.5 million,” Cordeiro wrote.
[Opinion: New US Soccer fact sheet eviscerates Megan Rapinoe’s ‘equal pay’ narrative]
