The unions for players on the U.S. national team were announced on Wednesday.
The deals will last through the end of the year. The agreements are making history.
The USSF and the two unions achieved equality in economics. The World Cup bonuses will now be split evenly between the two teams after the USSF takes its cut. The teams will pool together their World Cup prize money and get 90 percent of it, with the rest going to the World Cup bonuses and payouts.
The men and women are now receiving the same per-game bonuses. If the opponent is ranked in the top 25 of the rankings, players will receive $18,000 for a win, $12,000 for a draw and $8,000 for a loss. The amounts are $13,000 for a win, $10,000 for a draw and $8,000 for a defeat for all other opponents.
The two unions will get an even split of their commercial revenue. 10% of commercial revenue between $55 million and $75 million and 15% of commercial revenue over $75m will be given to the unions. While other countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Norway have taken steps towards equal pay, the U.S. deal goes much further by including more revenue streams in which equality is achieved.
Each team will get $5.06 for each ticket sold for games between 2022 and 2026, while the teams will get $5.75 per ticket for games between 2027 and 2028. Each team will get a cut of the ticket revenue for its own games only, so the women will get ticket compensation for its games and the men will not.
Both teams will have access to child care while in camp, a first for a men'sCBA.
The amount of work and amount of hours that everyone puts into this from the U.S. Soccer side, the men's side, the women's side and both of their unions. I don't know if there was a low or high moment. We did not stay there for a long time. We used to go back up on the roller coaster.
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There are many reasons for this. There were different needs for the respective unions. Most of the income of a male player is earned through his club. The national team was the primary source of income and benefits for a female soccer player. Two different structures were created by this.
The men used a pay-for-play model. If they got called up, they received compensation from the USSF. They missed out if they were injured. The women on the USWNT chose for more financial security, so they chose a system that included guaranteed salaries for a subset of players, as well as game bonuses. The guaranteed salary would still be given to the player even if they didn't get called in. A player who was not one of the contracted players relied on her game bonuses.
The USWNT players were not paid the same as men in terms of per-game bonuses. The USWNT had a lot to do with that, but it was also due to the USSF having a lot of leverage over the women's players because of their national team income. The amount of support staff the USWNT were given, the amount of payments the team received, and the hotels the team stayed in were all examples of how the team was treated differently.
The USSF has long stated that there was nothing that could be done in regards to how prize money is distributed. The bonus pool for the World Cup in Qatar will be $400m, while the women's tournament in Australia will be $60m. The last-place men's team won more prize money than the first-place women's team in the previous World Cup cycle.
The women players and their union pushed for equal pay. The players first filed a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The two sides settled the class action lawsuit in February, which was contingent on the new collective bargaining agreements being announced Monday.
In the 1990s, previous generations of the U.S. women's national team pushed for better pay and benefits. The result of all of those efforts is this agreement.
I am grateful to the women who have championed this women's rights issue long before me and I'm honored to join them in this service, said Midge Purce, who was a member of the USWNT.
The USSF had a change in leadership. Cone took over after Carlos Cordeiro resigned over legal files that criticized the USWNT players. One legal filing stated the women don't perform equal work because they don't have the same skill and effort as the men.
After Cone took over, she made it a priority to settle the equal pay lawsuit as well as the CBAs. She tied the equal pay lawsuit settlement to the negotiations of the World Cup bonus issue. She gained some credibility with the USWNT players by being a former player. The tone of the talks changed.
The men's union had to share their World Cup bonuses because of the pay disparity. They agreed to meet the women halfway.
Cone said on the conference call that this doesn't happen without the men advocating it.
They did and they did not. They will be getting less money from their exploits in Qatar than they otherwise might have, but according to a USNSTPA source with knowledge of the negotiations, the big issue for the men was increasing the per-game bonuses outside of a World Cup, which affect a greater number. There are just 23 players going to Qatar. Fifty-seven players made their last appearance for the USMNT in 2021, some of whom are just starting their professional careers. The increase will make a difference.
The men will receive retroactive pay and a $2.5m payment that won't be shared with the women because of the expired Collective Bargaining Agreement. The US National Soccer Team Players Association felt it was made whole to a degree that it was willing to share its cut of World Cup bonuses.
Sharing the bonuses was the right thing to do, as Nashville SC and USMNT defender Walker put it.
It is something that the USWNT players deserve, and sometimes it feels like we had just kind of come alongside of them. It is difficult to think about where we came from and how we got there, but it is important for us to feel like we are getting involved. It is never too late to get involved.
There is more risk, but the number of guaranteed USWNT salaries has been decreasing over the years. Per-game bonuses were the basis for the rest of the player pool.
The new deal has a lot of upside. The players on the U.S. women's team can get up to $18,000 for a win. They could earn up to $8,500 in their previous deal.
A player making all rosters in a non-World Cup year, including the ticket- and revenue-sharing portions, could make $450,000 under this new contract. The number could double in a World Cup year. When compared to the year before, players could see a compensation increase of 34% to 49%.
The minimum salary in the NWSL is $35,000, so the amount of additional money from USWNT duty could be life-changing for some players. There is a belief that the salaries of the players in the NWSL will increase as the league grows.
We now have a strong enough league here at home where we can depend on those salaries a little bit more and leave a little more risk up to the national team.
The bonuses would not be shared. It is borderline unthinkable that this scenario could happen.
The U.S. men didn't qualify for Russia 2018, but they have already qualified for the World Cup and are co-hosting the 2026 edition. That leads to the USMNT through this agreement.
With the men's tournament expanding to 48 teams, the USMNT is more likely to qualify, so this is likely to be in place for the World Cup in 2030.
The expansion of the World Cup to 32 teams will make qualification easier for the USWNT. The women will continue to contribute to the bonus pool.
It was close, but not quite. The downside protection that the women wanted in their deal was injury protection, health and dental insurance, and parental leave. The injury protection provision is going away.
Some USWNT players won't get these benefits. There will be 27 benefits players in 2022, and 23 in the rest of the term. The manager of the USWNT will decide who those players are. There are some demands of the players selected in that they must make best efforts to be available outside of FIFA windows, keep the USSF medical staff informed of injuries, submit to weekly medical monitoring and make best efforts to share sensor data.
Even if it took a long time, the federation helped advance gender equality. The USSF was taken to task in the court of public opinion. The federation can look forward now that it has put this behind them.
Cone helped get these deals over the line while also pushing a settlement in the equal pay case, so she can take a victory lap. The job of USSF president seems to be hers as long as she wants it.
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