World Cup Settlement: USWNT’s $24M Prize Money and Equal Pay

The U.S. Women’s National Team’s equal pay settlement is a $24 million deal with the U.S. Soccer Federation, announced February 25, 2022, that paid players back wages and required new collective bargaining agreements guaranteeing equal pay with the men’s team going forward.¹

How the $24 Million Breaks Down

Of the total, $22 million went directly to the players as back-pay damages, distributed in a manner proposed by the players and approved by the court.¹ The remaining $2 million funded post-career and charitable work: individual players can draw up to $50,000 each from the fund for goals tied to women’s and girls’ soccer.²

The number sat well below what the players had originally sought. The federal class action filed on March 8, 2019 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California asked for roughly $67 million in back pay and damages under the Equal Pay Act and Title VII. After Judge R. Gary Klausner granted partial summary judgment against the players on the pay claim in May 2020, the parties resolved separate working-conditions claims in November 2020, and the players took the pay ruling to the Ninth Circuit. The settlement arrived before that appeal was decided.³

A federal judge granted preliminary approval in August 2022, with finalization set for that December.⁴

The CBAs That Made the Money Flow

The settlement carried a condition: no payment unless U.S. Soccer ratified new collective bargaining agreements that equalized pay going forward.² Those agreements were formally signed on September 6, 2022 at Audi Field in Washington, D.C., by USWNT players Crystal Dunn, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Sam Mewis, along with the executive directors of both national team players’ unions.⁴

The CBAs run through 2028 and include:⁵

Identical game appearance fees and performance bonuses for both teams across all competitions, including the World Cup.
Pooling of a portion of FIFA World Cup prize money from the men’s and women’s tournaments, with equal percentages distributed to players on both rosters.
A 50/50 split of broadcast, partner, and sponsorship revenue between the two teams, plus a share of ticket revenue from U.S. Soccer-controlled home matches.
Equal quality in venues, field surfaces, charter travel, and hotel accommodations, along with childcare at training camps and matches.
A 401(k) plan for both teams with a company match of up to 5 percent of compensation.

The trade-off: the women’s team gave up its guaranteed federation salaries, and U.S. Soccer stopped paying NWSL club salaries for national team players.⁵

How World Cup Prize Money Actually Works Under the Deal

Pooling matters because FIFA still pays the men’s and women’s tournaments very differently. The men’s 2026 World Cup carries a record $655 million prize pool, a nearly 50 percent increase over the $440 million from 2022. The 2023 Women’s World Cup total was $110 million, leaving the men’s pot heading into 2026 roughly six times larger. FIFA has not announced a prize pool for the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil, and according to USA Today, has not publicly revisited FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s 2023 stated goal of equalizing the 2026 and 2027 prize pools.⁶ Infantino has cited a broadcast-rights gap, saying networks pay FIFA “between 10 and 100 times” less for women’s World Cup rights than the men’s.⁷

Because of the pooling arrangement, USWNT players will receive an equal share of whatever the USMNT earns in 2026, and USMNT players will share equally in the USWNT’s 2027 earnings. U.S. Soccer remains the only federation in the world doing this.⁵

Hope Solo’s Objection

Not every plaintiff signed off. Hope Solo, one of the five players who filed the original 2016 complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,³ formally objected on October 11, 2022. Through her attorney, Solo called the terms “unlawfully insufficient and ambiguous,” questioned how funds would be distributed among class members, and challenged the attorneys’ fees. The legal team was allocated roughly 36 percent of the $22 million cash portion, $6.6 million in fees plus $1.3 million in expenses, which Solo said exceeded the typical 25 percent benchmark for class actions.⁸

Solo did not opt in to the Equal Pay Act component of the class settlement and preserved a separate suit against U.S. Soccer in San Francisco that had been on hold during the class action.⁸

Jill Ellis’s Separate Payout

The players weren’t the only ones U.S. Soccer paid. Former head coach Jill Ellis, who led the USWNT to World Cup titles in 2015 and 2019, threatened litigation over her pay compared to the men’s head coach. In fiscal 2020, Ellis earned $746,623 in total compensation while USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter received $1,329,492. Earlier in her tenure the gap was wider: in 2016 she was paid $327,332 while then-USMNT coach Jurgen Klinsmann earned $3,076,594.⁹

The U.S. Soccer board authorized a confidential settlement with Ellis in the spring of 2022, shortly after the players’ deal was announced. The payment exceeded $1 million and did not appear as a discrete line item on the federation’s IRS Form 990 for fiscal 2023. According to ESPN and ABC News reporting, it was folded into general legal expense line items, with insurance covering a portion.¹⁰ The Ellis payout is distinct from the $24 million class settlement and did not flow to the players.

1
NPR. Women Soccer Contracts Equal Pay Settlement USWNT
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CNBC. USWNT and US Soccer Federation Reach $24 Million Settlement in Equal Pay Lawsuit
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The New York Times. USWNT Soccer Equal Pay
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PBS NewsHour. U.S. Men’s and Women’s Soccer Teams Formally Sign Equal Pay Agreements
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U.S. Soccer. USSF, Women’s and Men’s National Team Unions Agree to Historic Collective Bargaining Agreements
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USA Today. FIFA World Cup Prize Money Record USWNT
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ABC Australia. FIFA World Cup Prize Money Six Times More for Men Tournament
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Sportico. Hope Solo USWNT Settlement Objection
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ESPN. USWNT Coach Jill Ellis Equal Pay Settlement US Soccer
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ABC News. USWNT Coach Jill Ellis Received Separate Equal Pay