The US women's soccer team gets $6.4M from the men's World Cup run — $246K each even though they didn't play a minute

The USWNT still has to qualify for the Women’s World Cup — it faces El Salvador on Nov. 27 in a win-and-in Concacaf quarterfinal — and its 2027 roster won't be locked until next spring.

Until then, the $6.4 million sits in an interest-bearing account, and only the players who make that roster collect. The interest splits across all 52 World Cup players, the 26 men from this summer and the 26 women next year.

The men will get paid relatively quickly. The CBA requires U.S. Soccer to pay out the men's shares within 31 days of receiving the money from FIFA.

A fight that took six years

The arrangement traces back to one of the longest labor battles in American sports. The USWNT filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against U.S. Soccer in 2019, seeking back pay and equal treatment. The case was dismissed, appealed, and finally settled in 2022 for $24 million — but only on the condition that new CBAs establishing pay parity got signed.

Those agreements, which run through 2028, made U.S. Soccer the first federation in the world to pool and split World Cup prize money between its men's and women's teams. Prize money was the sticking point the women had pushed hardest on, since the FIFA men's tournament dwarfs the women's. The 2026 men's tournament carried a record $871 million in total FIFA payouts; the 2023 women's tournament paid the USWNT just $1.87 million for its round-of-16 finish.

U.S. Soccer also splits its World Cup apparel and sponsorship revenue evenly between the teams. The players collectively take 10% of that commercial revenue, or 15% once it clears $75 million.

The men's cut is lopsided for now

When the USWNT plays the 2027 World Cup in Brazil, the men will collect an equal share of whatever the women earn — but FIFA's women's payouts are far smaller, so the reciprocity is lopsided.