What’s a World Cup Title Worth? For U.S. Women, Six Figures and Counting

What is winning the World Cup title worth to the United States women’s soccer team?

In one sense, the answer is incalculable: an achievement no critic can take away, a tangible reward for years of training and preparation, a validation of a life’s work. A dozen members of the United States women’s soccer team already knew this feeling; they were part of the team that lifted the trophy in 2015. Now they are letting it wash over them again.

[The United Statesbeat a tenacious Netherlandson Sunday to win their record fourth World Cup title.]

But there also is a more dispassionate, strictly dollars-and-cents calculation of the championship’s value for every member of the team that beat the Netherlands on Sunday. That math — some if it contracted and fixed, some of it speculative and growing day by day — is quite different.

In the strictest sense, a United States women’s player will receive a guaranteed payday of about $250,000 for qualifying for the World Cup, making the final roster and then winning the tournament, based on enhanced bonuses included in the team’s collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer and a payout schedule for the finishers published by FIFA earlier this year. (Those FIFA bonus figures continue to pale in comparison to the far larger payouts for teams who compete in the men’s World Cup; France’s men, for example, split $38 million for winning the men’s tournament in Russia last summer. Those payments, and comparisons to FIFA-fueled payouts to the United States men’s team after its participation in recent World Cups, are part of a broader and perpetually contentious debate about pay equality for women’s soccer.)

Source: The New York Times

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