The riddle when it came to offering equal pay — not just equal terms — to the U.S. Soccer men’s and women’s national teams was as obvious as it was challenging.
A bulk of the funding that eventually gets to the players comes from FIFA World Cup prize money and there has never been, and perhaps never will be, anything equal about that.
The men’s game is exponentially more popular globally than the women’s game. The television, merchandise and ticket revenue FIFA draws in from each is lopsided toward the men.
As such, FIFA is expected to award $440 million to the federations in the 2022 men’s event and $60 million to those in the 2023 women’s event.