The U.S. Soccer Settlement: $24M, Equal Pay, and Prize Pooling

The U.S. Soccer equal pay settlement, announced on February 22, 2022, resolved the U.S. Women’s National Team’s class action against the U.S. Soccer Federation for $24 million and a commitment to pay women’s and men’s national team players at equal rates going forward. It made the federation the first in American professional sports to guarantee pay equity between its male and female athletes.¹

How the $24 Million Breaks Down

Of the $24 million total, $22 million was designated as back pay for class members. The class is defined as all players who were members of the women’s national team at any point between June 11, 2015, and November 8, 2019.² The distribution among individual players was to be proposed by the players themselves and approved by the court.³

The remaining $2 million went into a fund supporting players’ post-career goals and charitable work related to women’s and girls’ soccer. Individual players can apply to the fund for up to $50,000.¹

The settlement was contingent on ratification of a new collective bargaining agreement covering both teams. The federation began paying ahead of final approval, depositing the first of four $5.5 million installments on June 1, 2022.⁴

What Equal Pay Looks Like Going Forward

On May 18, 2022, U.S. Soccer signed identical collective bargaining agreements with the men’s and women’s players’ unions, running through 2028. The contracts were formally signed in September 2022.⁵⁶ The core provisions:

All FIFA World Cup prize money received by U.S. Soccer for both tournaments is pooled. After a 10% allocation to youth programs, the remainder is split equally between the two teams. The arrangement began with the 2022 Men’s World Cup and 2023 Women’s World Cup and repeats for 2026 and 2027.⁵
Both teams moved to a pay-for-play model with identical roster appearance fees and identical performance bonuses for friendlies, structured by match outcome and opponent ranking.⁵
A portion of broadcast, sponsorship, and partner revenue is shared equally between the teams, along with ticket revenue from home matches.⁵
Women’s team players gained access to a 401(k) plan with up to a 5% match from U.S. Soccer, parental leave of up to six months, health and dental insurance, and short-term disability benefits.⁵

The women’s team gave up things in exchange. Guaranteed salaries went away, and U.S. Soccer stopped paying NWSL salaries for national team players. That aligned the women’s compensation structure with the men’s pay-for-play system.⁵

How Prize Pooling Played Out at the 2023 World Cup

The pooling arrangement mattered immediately because FIFA’s prize pools are so unequal. FIFA paid out $450 million to men’s teams at the 2019 World Cup cycle compared with $30 million to women’s teams.⁶ Because the U.S. men earned $13 million at the 2022 World Cup, even a group-stage exit by the U.S. women in 2023 would have delivered each player over $6 million collectively from the combined pool.⁷ Per-player projections ranged from roughly $298,000 at the group stage to about $460,000 for winning the tournament, plus an additional $10,000 match bonus for each game played.⁸

How the Case Got to a Settlement

Twenty-eight members of the USWNT filed the class action in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on March 8, 2019, alleging institutionalized gender discrimination in pay and working conditions.¹ The claims grew out of 2016 EEOC complaints filed by Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, Becky Sauerbrunn, Hope Solo, and Carli Lloyd under the Equal Pay Act and Title VII.⁹

In May 2020, Judge R. Gary Klausner granted the federation summary judgment on the equal pay claims, accepting the argument that the women had received more total compensation than the men, though the players contended this reflected superior performance rather than equitable pay rates.⁹¹⁰¹¹

The players appealed the equal pay dismissal to the Ninth Circuit in July 2021, arguing the district court had used the wrong standard by comparing total compensation instead of rates of pay. Expert calculations submitted on appeal showed that if the women had been paid under the men’s CBA, they would have earned roughly $64 million more from 2015 through 2019.¹² The settlement came before the Ninth Circuit ruled.

Hope Solo’s Separate Case

Hope Solo filed her own lawsuit against the federation in the Northern District of California in August 2018 and did not join the 2019 class action. Her case was administratively stayed pending the class case.¹³ The $24 million settlement did not resolve her claims. In February 2023, Solo and the federation agreed to dismiss her remaining equal pay and discrimination claims, closing out the last piece of litigation between national team players and the governing body.¹⁴

1
CNBC. USWNT and US Soccer Federation Reach 24 Million Settlement in Equal Pay Lawsuit
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ESPN. USWNT US Soccer Federation Settle Equal Pay Lawsuit 24 Million
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U.S. Soccer. USSF Womens and Mens National Team Unions Agree to Historic Collective Bargaining Agreements
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PBS. US Mens and Womens Soccer Teams Formally Sign Equal Pay Agreements
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