The U.S. women’s and men’s national teams reached a historic equal pay deal in 2022. So for the 2023 World Cup, the USWNT will share its winnings with the USMNT.
The 2022 men’s World Cup provided the first demonstration of the pay sharing mechanism included in the teams’ collective bargaining agreements. The teams will pool their prize money from both tournaments and divide it equally among their players, minus a small cut for the national federation. Just Women’s Sports already has broken down how it works.
FIFA provided a much larger prize pool for the men’s tournament – $440 million, compared to $110 million for the 2023 women’s tournament. So while both U.S. teams exited their respective tournaments in the Round of 16, USWNT players will make less from their own tournament run than they will from the USMNT’s run.
“There’s still a big discrepancy between the men’s prize money from FIFA and the women’s, and to me that’s unacceptable,” USWNT defender Kelley O’Hara said ahead of the tournament.
How much will each team make once the FIFA prize money is distributed? Just Women’s Sports has done the math.
For the first time in Women’s World Cup history, FIFA is allocating prize money specifically for participating players. But that news comes with a caveat: The money still will be doled out to the national federations, which then will be responsible for distributing the money to players, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said before the tournament.
Here is the complete breakdown of the prize money to be paid to national federations depending on how deep each team advances in the tournament, including the money allocated for each player and for the federation.
The USWNT and USMNT will split the prize money earned at the tournament equally, less a 10% cut for U.S. Soccer. With the Round of 16 exit, that equates to $1.46 million each.
That is significantly less than the $5.85 million per team earned from the USMNT’s round of 16 exit at the 2022 men’s World Cup.
The discrepancy would have been clear even if the USWNT had won a third consecutive World Cup title. A championship victory would have earned $4.73 million for each national team, still less than the USMNT made in 2022 — but more than for past women’s tournaments. The USWNT won $4 million total for its World Cup win in 2019, up from $2 million in 2015.