Football: US men's and women's teams to share World Cup prize money

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption, The United States women's team have won four World Cups. The best finish from their male equivalents was third place in 1930

Men and women's US football teams will share prize money from the World Cup as well as money from TV and sponsorship equally as part of a series of deals agreed to give equal pay.

The news was announced by the US football authority The United States Soccer Federation on Wednesday.

Earlier this year the US women's national soccer team said they had reached an agreement about equal pay with the governing body US Soccer - but it wasn't clear how it would happen in practice.

US Soccer and the two teams have now agreed that reallocating the prize money between the teams is a good place to start.

The deals, which run through to the end of 2028, also guarantee that the women's team will play at equal quality venues, stay in hotels of the same standard and be given an equal number of charter flights to travel to games.

The men's team will also now receive childcare benefits, something which the women's team have had for more than 25 years.

This makes US Soccer becomes the first federation in the world to award equal prize money from World Cups to both women's and men's teams, with each player getting matching game appearance fees.

The US men have already qualified for their competition in Qatar in 2022, while the women's team won the last world cup in France and are expected to qualify for Australia 2023 later this summer.

How different is the situation for men's and women's teams?

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption, Contests like the She Believes Cup have raised the profile of the women's game and helped to make it more popular with ticket sales steadily growing

Currently the prize money for the men's World Cup in Qatar is $440m, while the prize money for the women's tournament in Australia in 2023 is $60m.

Male players had been paid several times what female players would receive, with US players also receiving bonuses based on payments to the federation from Fifa.

US Soccer had previously said it was difficult to level up prize money between the two teams because of the significant difference in amounts paid by Fifa to federations from the men's and women's tournaments.

Striker Margaret Purse has spoken about the difficulties growing up, seeing the inequalities in the women's and men's games.

She said: "My dad always told me that you don't get rewarded for doing what you're supposed to do - and paying men and women equally is what you're supposed to do."

Back in 2019 the Women's squad players went to court to fight against the fact men were being paid more than them for doing the same job.

Instead a settlement was reached, and the team were paid $24m (拢17.7m) in recognition that this was wrong. At that time, US Soccer said the new agreement was "a necessary and critical step to resolution".

The US women's team has consistently performed at a much higher level than the men's, having won the Women's World Cup four times.

They have also been runners-up once and third three times, whereas the men's squad has never got past the last 16, and failed to qualify on several occasions.