Soccer

U.S. Soccer Says It Pays Women’s Team More Than Men’s Team


U.S. Soccer on Monday released a lengthy fact sheet detailing its financial commitment to the World Cup-winning women’s national team program, stepping squarely into the debate about equal pay only weeks before the federation and the team are scheduled to enter mediation to try to resolve the players’ federal gender discrimination lawsuit.

U.S. Soccer’s president, Carlos Cordeiro, outlined the federation’s position in an open letter to the federation’s members in which he cited figures, produced in a federation analysis of 10 years of financial data, that he said showed the players on the women’s team had actually earned more from U.S. Soccer than their male counterparts over the past decade.

Cordeiro also highlighted tens of millions of dollars of investment by the federation in women’s soccer, noting specifically more than $18 million in direct support for the National Women’s Soccer League, the seven-year-old professional league, and millions more in spending on youth programs.

The debate about equal pay and equitable treatment of the women’s team raged long before it won an unprecedented fourth Women’s World Cup championship, beating the Netherlands this month to cap an unbeaten run through the tournament in France. Talk of pay and fairness had hovered over the tournament since its start, in part because 28 members of the American team filed suit against the federation in March, arguing that they were victims of years of “institutionalized gender discrimination” that affected not only their incomes but nearly every feature of their interactions with U.S. Soccer.

The World Cup and its resulting championship glow had been part of an uneasy truce between the team and the federation, one that held as the players were feted by fans and politicians and hailed in media interviews and talk-show appearances. But the issue never lingered far from the stage; the women heard chants of “Equal pay!” even before they received their winner’s medals at the World Cup, and officials like Cordeiro were heckled by the same mantra during the team’s ticker-tape celebrations in New York.

Cordeiro said U.S. Soccer had made “a deliberate decision” not to debate the facts of the lawsuit or the broader equal pay fight while the women’s team was preparing to defend its world championship, but his letter seemed to be an acknowledgment that recent events — including pressure from corporations and at least one U.S. Soccer sponsor, as well as efforts in Congress that could imperil funding to prepare for the 2026 World Cup to be held in North America — had forced the federation to engage.

It was unclear how Cordeiro’s letter would be received by the players themselves. Early indications were that it was not going over well: a statement from a spokeswoman for the women’s team players labeled the conclusions in Cordeiro’s letter “utterly false” and the release of it “a ruse” to change a conversation the federation was losing in the public square.

And even as he heaped praise on the players who have argued publicly and loudly for better treatment — Cordeiro called the World Cup winners “an inspiration to us all and truly some of the greatest athletes that our nation has ever produced” — he also raised familiar arguments about why their pay was different. He said it was difficult to compare the pay of the men’s and women’s national teams because of differing compensation structures; that a vast divide in FIFA prize money for men and women skews any comparison of compensation; and that the women’s team has produced per-game revenues that were, on average over 10 years, half of those generated by the men’s national team.

“Still,” he wrote, “like any organization, U.S. Soccer recognizes that we can continue to improve.” Cordeiro said the federation was “committed to doing right by our players.”

“Together,” he wrote, “I believe we can get this done.”

The reaction to his letter from the players, however, suggested he might have miscalculated.

“This is a sad attempt by U.S.S.F. to quell the overwhelming tide of support the U.S.W.N.T. has received from everyone from fans to sponsors to the United States Congress,” Molly Levinson, a spokeswoman for the players in the gender lawsuit, said in a statement. “The U.S.S.F. has repeatedly admitted that it does not pay the women equally and that it does not believe the women even deserve to be paid equally.”

The players’ spokeswoman contended that the federation included the players’ N.W.S.L. salaries to inflate their national team pay.

“The U.S.S.F. fact sheet is not a ‘clarification,’” Levinson’s statement said acidly. “It is a ruse.”



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