U.S. Soccer argues women’s team doesn’t face same things as men’s
World Cup prize money.
FIFA awarded $400 million for the 2018 men’s World Cup, including $38 million to champion France — the U.S. men failed to qualify — and $30 million for last year’s Women’s World Cup, including $4 million to the U.S. after the Americans won their second straight title. FIFA has increased the total to $440 million for the 2022 men’s World Cup and FIFA President Gianni Infantino has proposed that FIFA double the women’s prize money to $60 million for 2023.
FIFA pays bonuses to national federations, and each makes its own deal with its players.
“Passing on the discriminatory prize money differential of FIFA to the federation is exactly the perpetuation of discrimination that the EPA seeks to remedy,“lawyers for the women said in their filing. “USSF cannot rely upon a third party’s discrimination as a justification for its own decision to discriminate in World Cup compensation between the MNT players and WNT players.
“A third party’s payment to USSF — an amount that USSF did not even know at the time it negotiated either team’s World Cup compensation provisions — is not a job-related factor that can justify a wage discrimination,” they wrote.
The women claimed the men traveled on charter flights almost three times more often than the women from 2014-19 despite the women playing 33 more matches.
The USSF said the women claimed their ability level is the same as the men “by ignoring the materially higher level of speed and strength required to perform the job of an MNT player.”
“A reasonable juror could conclude that the job of MNT player requires materially different skill and more responsibility than plaintiffs’ job does, while also taking place under materially different working conditions,” USSF lawyers wrote. “The job of MNT player (competing against senior men’s national teams) requires a higher level of skill based on speed and strength than does the job of WNT player (competing against senior women’s national teams).”
Molly Levinson, spokesperson for the suing women, said “thisar` gument’ belongs in the Paleolithic Era.”
“It sounds as if it has been made by a caveman,” she said in a statement. “Literally everyone in the world understands that an argument that male playersh`ave more responsibility’ is just plain simple sexism and illustrates the very gender discrimination that caused us to file this lawsuit to begin with.”
The supporters group of the men’s and women’s national team issued a statement criticizing the USSF for saying men’s players have more responsibility.
“The American Outlaws find that viewpoint objectionable, and it is disappointing to see the federation make such an argument,“the group said. “That is not how the sport should be run in this country or any country.“
In addition, the federation said the men have averaged three times the television viewers of the women during the last three years for matches whose rights are owned by the USSF.
USSF lawyers said the women did not demonstrate they have the same responsibility as the men and cited the lesser prize money as evidence.
“MNT players have responsibility for competing in multiple soccer tournaments with the potential for generating a total of more than $40 million in prize money for U.S. Soccer every four years,” they said. “WNT players compete in only one soccer tournament every four years that has the potential to generate any prize money at all, and most recently that amounted to one-tenth of the amount the MNT players could generate.”