Men's and women's national soccer teams to get equal split of prize money

This is NOT equal pay for equal work.  It is unfair discrimination.  The men bring in much more revenue than the women -- mainly because it is the men that people want to watch.  But I guess the split is chivalrous


The unions for the United States men's and women's national soccer teams have ratified new collective bargaining agreements with U.S. Soccer that include an equal split of World Cup bonuses, the federation and the two unions announced on Wednesday.

The two CBAs will go into effect on June 1 and will last until the end of 2028. The U.S. National Soccer Team Players Association (USNSTPA), which represented the men's players, had been operating without a CBA since the end of 2018. The deal for the U.S. Women's National Team Players Association (USWNTPA) expired at the end of 2021, though it had been extended.

The agreements are a promise kept by U.S. Soccer Federation president Cindy Parlow Cone, who had vowed that new CBAs would need to address the equal pay issue of World Cup bonuses. The CBAs also put into effect the much-celebrated financial settlement between the USWNT and the federation, which was announced in February after years of legal jostling.

"I've been saying it for a long time. I wanted to lead on this. I wanted U.S. Soccer to lead on this," Cone told ESPN via a video call. "But we couldn't do it alone. We needed both the men's players and the men's [union] and the women's players and the women's [union] to come together in one room to negotiate a contract.

"And I'll be honest, there were days that I didn't think we were going to get it across the line. But we are here, and I'm just so incredibly proud of what we have accomplished and what it is going to mean, not only for the game here in the U.S. but globally."

The deals change the dynamic between the two teams. Before, they were competing for attention and resources from the USSF. Now, they're working together to benefit both unions.

"I'm really excited to start this partnership almost fresh, a clean slate. We're working together," said Nashville SC defender Walker Zimmerman, a member of the USNSTPA's leadership team. "We have accomplished so much together with this revolutionary CBA, and certainly we're [going to] be cheering like crazy, because that's exactly what this CBA is. It's equal. We will be their biggest fans. I'm sure they will be our biggest fans, as well."

U.S. Soccer president: New CBA agreement a truly historic momentU.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone explains the details of the new CBAs for the USMNT and USWNT.
As women's national team forward Midge Purce, a member of the union's CBA committee, added, "I think what this CBA does is it finally creates that 'One Nation. One Team.' And I think that it's really brought us together under that ideology that we've been chasing after for a really long time."

The respective unions will receive 90% of the FIFA bonuses paid at the 2022 and 2023 World Cups and 80% of the bonuses at the 2026 and 2027 editions. All of the funds paid out from those bonus pools will be split evenly among the two national teams. FIFA has announced that the entire bonus pool for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will be $400 million, while the bonuses for the women's tournament in Australia in 2023 will be $60 million. In the previous World Cup cycle, the last-place men's team won more prize money than the first-place women's team.

https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-states-usaw/story/4668464/uswntusmnt-get-equal-split-of-world-cup-bonuses-in-new-cbas

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