Female soccer players are paid less because their sport makes less. There was $17 million in sponsor revenue for this year's women's World Cup compared to $529 million for the 2014 men's tournament. America's winning women earned a larger share, about 11%, of the money their tournament made this year from sponsors than the victorious German team, who got just 6.6% of the sponsor revenue from last year's men's World Cup as their prize.