U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Stars Allege Pay Discrimination
Complaint says players earn a fraction of their male counterparts despite superior achievements
Five of the biggest stars on the world champion U.S. women's national soccer team accused the U.S. Soccer Federation of pay discrimination, alleging female players are paid a fraction of their male counterparts. Photo: Associated Press
Five of the biggest stars on the world champion U.S. women’s national soccer team accused the U.S. Soccer Federation of pay discrimination, despite the women’s team’s superior on-field achievements and higher anticipated revenue.
The federal complaint, which was unveiled Thursday, alleges that the players earn a fraction of their male counterparts for national team appearances—sometimes as little as 38%. The players bringing the complaint, which they say comes on behalf of the whole team, are all veterans who played key roles in turning the U.S. into the most recognizable women’s team in soccer: captain Carli Lloyd, goalkeeper Hope Solo, midfielder Megan Rapinoe, defender Becky Sauerbrunn and striker Alex Morgan.
The players filed the complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission amid a legal dispute between their union and the federation over the validity of their collective bargaining agreement, which expires later this year. Those talks haven’t been productive, according to the players’ attorney Jeffrey Kessler. When their demand for equal pay came up then, Mr. Kessler said, the federation called it “an irrational request.”
The women’s national team is a three-time World Cup winner and defending Olympic champion. Its victory in the 2015 World Cup final against Japan last summer was the most-watched soccer game of all time in the U.S. with over 26 million viewers. The men’s team has never progressed past the World Cup quarterfinals since finishing third at the inaugural tournament in 1930.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Ms. Solo. “We are the best in the world, have three World Cup championships, four Olympic championships, and the [men’s national team] get paid more to just show up than we get paid to win major championships.”
Ms. Sauerbrunn said, “We feel like it was the right thing to do. We’re fighting the good fight. U.S. Soccer has no justification for paying us as little as they do.”
In a statement, the U.S. Soccer Federation said its support of women’s soccer is “unwavering.”
“For 30 years, we have been a world leader in promoting the women’s game and are proud of the long-standing commitment we have made to building women’s soccer in the U.S. and furthering opportunities in soccer for young women and girls around the world,” the federation said.
The federation said negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement that addresses compensation are ongoing and will go into effect when the agreement expires at the end of this year. Representatives of the team have argued that the agreement is actually already void.
In a conference call Thursday night, U.S. Soccer leaders said comparable revenues for the men’s team over a multi-year period were nearly twice as much for the men as they were for the women. Sunil Gulati, the president of the federation, said separating compensation from revenues was impossible in a market economy. “It is absolutely part of the equation,” he said.
Officials also noted that during the past three years the federation has invested $10 million in the women’s league.
U.S. Soccer estimates that the women’s national team will generate $17.6 million in event-based revenue between April 2016 and March 2017 based on a slate of up to 27 matches, according to the budget it proposed at February’s Annual General Meeting. (Those include a post-Olympics tour and an end-of-season tournament.) Over the same period, it expects the men’s team to bring in $9 million for up to 12 matches.
As for the sale of television rights, U.S. Soccer bundles its men’s and women’s games together, making it impossible to tell which games are most attractive to broadcasters. That said, the cost of a 30-second ad during Fox’s broadcast of the 2015 Women’s World Cup final was $210,760, compared with $465,140 for a 30-second spot on ABC in 2014 during the men’s final, which didn’t feature Americans. The women’s 2015 final drew 8 million more viewers.
Women’s players receive a base salary of $72,000 to appear in 20 exhibition games per season, with victory bonuses taking that up to a maximum of $99,000, according to the filing. The men, the complaint added, “receive a minimum of $5,000 to play in each game, regardless of the outcome” for the same number of appearances. Win bonuses for the men can also reach $17,625 per player per victory, depending on an opponent’s ranking.
Under their current agreements with U.S. Soccer, for instance, the women’s team can earn $75,000 bonuses per player for winning the World Cup. If the men’s team won the equivalent tournament, each squad member would pick up nearly $400,000.
The prize money allocated in each tournament by FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, is similarly disparate. Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who once suggested women should play in tighter shorts, came under fire last year when the winners of the Women’s World Cup took home $2 million in prize money. Germany, which lifted the men’s trophy in 2014, earned $35 million from FIFA.
The U.S. women’s team doesn’t receive bonuses for qualifying for the World Cup either, since their record makes it almost a formality. The men’s team, however, receives a $2.5 million bonus to be divided among its players.
In hiring Mr. Kessler, the U.S. women are being represented by arguably the country’s most formidable lawyer for athletes. During a 40-year career in sports law, Mr. Kessler has advised both the National Basketball Association and National Football League Players Association, leading litigation efforts that led to the NFL’s goundbreaking collective bargaining agreement in the 1990s. More recently, Mr. Kessler beat the NFL in its attempt to suspend Tom Brady for four games, a move that would have cost him millions in salary, for his alleged role in the so-called “deflate-gate” controversy. The NFL has appealed that ruling.
U.S. Soccer officials have argued that its support for the National Women’s Soccer League—the pro league it helps subsidize after two previous pro leagues failed—shows that it is fully behind the women’s game regardless of pay discrepancies.
This isn’t the women’s team’s first major complaint about unequal treatment. Ahead of the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada, several prominent American players took legal action to protest the matches’ being played on artificial turf, which they argued was more dangerous than natural turf. The men’s World Cup has never been played on artificial grass, yet FIFA refused to make any changes.
More recently, the women’s national team refused to play an exhibition game in Hawaii due to similar concerns about the quality of an artificial-turf field.
The battle between the women’s team and the Soccer Federation goes back 20 years. In the months leading up to the 1996 Olympics, tensions over pay ran so high that nine members of the team were locked out of a training camp. They were told they would only get bonus money if they won gold, while men would get money if they placed in the top three.
As the Olympics approached, leaders of the team threatened not to play unless they received additional pay and better treatment, including an upgrade of food on the training table. The women received some concessions, but pay remained low and bitterness lingered, especially after the women won the gold medal.
Four years later, Women’s Sports Foundation President Donna Lopiano took up the cause, reporting that from 1995-98, veteran team members were paid just $3,000 a month, while newcomers received $2,000 per month. The men who participated in the 1998 World Cup each received about $55,000. The women who played in the 1999 World Cup, one of the most closely followed sports events ever on U.S. soil, initially received $15,000, though that figure was later boosted after it became public.
“If the USSF comes back and says they’re going to treat the women equally, that would be a great first step,” Mr. Kessler said on Thursday. “The reality is that the women’s team has been more valuable to the USSF than the men’s team has been.”
Write to Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson@wsj.com and Matthew Futterman at matthew.futterman@wsj.com
