U.S. Women’s Soccer ‘Equal Pay’ Agreement Includes Men’s Team Now Subsidizing Their Pay

Article here. Excerpt:

'In what is being called an “equal pay” agreement between the U.S. Soccer Federation and the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams, the men’s team will soon begin subsidizing the women’s team’s bonuses with their own international prize money.

The landmark agreement was reached after years litigation between U.S. Soccer and members of the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT), who claimed they were unfairly paid differently than the U.S. Men’s National Team (USMNT). The women made this claim even though each team had their own separate collective bargaining agreement about their pay structure.

To achieve “equal pay,” according to The New York Times, “U.S. Soccer will distribute millions of extra dollars to its best players through a complicated calculus of increased match bonuses, pooled prize money and new revenue-sharing agreements that will give each team a slice of the tens of millions of dollars in commercial revenues that U.S. Soccer receives each year from sponsors, broadcasters and other partners.”'