The U.S. Soccer Federation and dozens of members of the U.S. women’s national team who sued it for gender discrimination have reached a $24 million settlement agreement that promises to end one of the most prominent pay cases in sports history.
The proposed deal calls for U.S. Soccer to pay $22 million to the class, which includes 61 women, plus $2 million into a fund that those players can access for post-career goals and charitable efforts in women’s and girls’ soccer. Each player will be able to apply for up to $50,000 from the fund.
The agreement comes two weeks before a scheduled March 7 hearing in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, Calif. There, the women’s players were set to appeal a May 2020 summary judgment in which U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner had thrown out the women’s claim that they had been illegally paid less than the U.S. men’s team, ruling that the women provided insufficient evidence to support it.
The deal comes with a crucial contingency. It will only be finalized once the U.S. women’s team and U.S. Soccer ratify a new collective bargaining agreement. The two sides recently extended the current women’s deal through March 31. If a CBA is ratified and the settlement receives approval from the district court, the agreement will resolve the litigation, according to both parties.
As part of the settlement deal, U.S. Soccer has committed to providing an equal rate of pay going forward for the U.S. women’s and men’s teams in all friendlies and tournaments, including the World Cup.
It isn’t clear what that would mean in practice. The international soccer federation, FIFA, sets World Cup prize money amounts, and a huge gap remains between the men’s and women’s pots. The 2019 women’s World Cup awarded $4 million to the winning federation out of a total pool of $30 million. The 2018 men’s World Cup awarded $38 million to the winner out of a pool of $400 million.
“We really do feel like we won in so many ways, but to even have to go through this at all is unacceptable,” U.S. women’s player Megan Rapinoe said. “And I think everybody agrees with that.”
U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone, who played on the 1999 World Cup-champion team, said she understood where the players were coming from.
“I’ll be the first to admit that the federation has made mistakes in the past,” Cone said. “As a former player, I understand the frustration of being treated that way.” She added that the agreement is “just one step towards rebuilding the relationship with Megan and the rest of the team.”
In a statement, the USWNT Players Association called the deal an “incredible success,” and said it expects the federation to come to the table committed to reaching a labor deal.
Both sides gain something in the agreement. The women can say they wrested back pay from a federation that had denied it compensated them unequally, gained better working conditions in a separate settlement deal, and secured fairer contracts for the players who follow them.
U.S. Soccer, meanwhile, all but ends litigation that had both turned many women’s team’s fans against the organization and complicated the sale of federation sponsorships and broadcast rights.
The settlement also comes just ahead of the March election of a federation president. In that race, Cone faces Carlos Cordeiro, a longtime soccer insider and the former U.S. Soccer president who resigned in the wake of a sponsor revolt over a court filing in the pay case that many saw as sexist.
The contingency of a finalized CBA is significant. The federation has said publicly that it will only finalize deals with its men’s and women’s national teams—which operate under separate labor agreements—if the teams agree to equal prize-money distributions for their respective World Cups.
That could take time. The U.S. men’s team deal, in ongoing negotiations, expired in 2018. Men’s players generally earn far more from their professional clubs than they do from U.S. Soccer play. That means the men haven’t matched the urgency to negotiate of the women, who generally earn more from U.S. Soccer than they do from their pro teams.
In their current deals, the women and men also have different pay structures, with the women having more guaranteed money and the men having larger bonuses for wins. Those structures will have to be reconciled to achieve an equal rate of pay.
The settlement agreement appears to set aside the issue of back pay for the wide gap in World Cup prize money. An expert witness hired by the women said that total damages could reach $67 million, including amounts for the women winning the World Cup under the U.S. men’s team pay structure.
In interviews, neither Cone nor Rapinoe addressed that issue directly. Cone said, “There’s a lot about this, regardless of where the number landed, that is positive for the women’s team, positive for U.S. Soccer and positive for women’s sports in general.”
The players’ suit caused shockwaves in the sports world when 28 players including lead plaintiff Alex Morgan filed it on March 8, 2019, three months before the U.S. would travel to the Women’s World Cup in France to defend its 2015 title. More players later joined the suit.
The case became a point of debate among the team’s critics, who contended that the U.S. women didn’t deserve equal pay when their signature event, the Women’s World Cup, reportedly generated so little revenue. A Wall Street Journal article later revealed that the false revenue figure used in that argument was based on a misunderstanding of the women’s tournament’s financial structure.
FIFA had long thrown in the women’s event with the men’s World Cup when selling broadcast rights and sponsorships, and didn’t actually know how much the women’s event was worth. FIFA has since begun selling separate sponsorships and broadcast rights to the Women’s World Cup.
For the U.S. women’s supporters, the suit became a rallying cry for change. At the sold-out 2019 Women’s World Cup final in Lyon, France, fans celebrated the U.S. victory over the Netherlands by chanting, “Equal pay!” The chants continued as the team was honored in a New York City parade and at subsequent friendly games, and has been cited as inspiration by women in and out of sports around the world.