A multiyear legal battle between U.S. women’s national team players and the U.S. Soccer Federation over gender equity may finally see its conclusion.

On Tuesday, the two parties announced they’ve reached a settlement — reportedly worth $24 million — in the historic equal-pay lawsuit first filed in March 2019.

The settlement will need to be finalized through a new collective bargaining agreement and then submitted to the district court. But here’s what the proposal would stipulate, according to multiple outlets:

• The 61 women’s players in the plaintiff class would receive a total of $22 million.
• Every player could apply for up to $50,000 worth of a $2 million fund for grassroots women’s soccer and post-playing endeavors.
• In the future, men’s and women’s teams would receive the same rate for playing on the national team.

A Long Road

The lawsuit itself was the culmination of years of disputes between players and U.S. Soccer. 

Months after it was filed, the team won the World Cup and celebrated in a victory parade in New York that featured fans chanting “equal pay” and confetti cut from court documents raining down on Lower Manhattan.

In May 2020, the players’ side lost on the issue of unequal pay in a district court. They later settled with U.S. Soccer over working conditions.

Players appealed the pay-equity issue to the Ninth Circuit, where now-postponed oral arguments were set for March 7 of this year.

Among those leaving the 2022 Winter Olympics in disappointment: NBCUniversal. 

The Comcast-owned network averaged only 11.4 million prime-time viewers per night for the Beijing Games, the lowest figure on record. 

• The Games drew 160 million total U.S. viewers across 2,800 hours of coverage on NBC, Peacock, and other platforms.
• The 13-hour time difference between Beijing and New York can’t shoulder all the blame: The Games dropped 42% from the 19.8 million nightly viewers who watched the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, which is 14 hours ahead of New York.
• Peacock performed well, leading NBCUniversal’s platforms to 4.3 billion minutes of Olympic streaming. Peacock enjoyed its best 18-day stretch since its July 2020 launch.

The ratings drop continues a trend from this past summer, when the Tokyo Games averaged 15.5 million prime-time viewers — the lowest figure since 1998, when NBC took hold of the broadcasting rights.

NBC extended its contract to broadcast the Games in May 2014 in a $7.8 billion deal that runs through 2032.

Super Bump

The Games did get a lift from NBCUniversal’s Super Bowl LVI broadcast on Feb. 13. On that day, the network more than doubled its average Olympic viewership to 24 million.

The Super Bowl boasted 112 million viewers, roughly matching the Big Game’s best performances in history.

A group of investors led by Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca have agreed to acquire a 55% stake in Serie A’s Atalanta B.C., valuing the Italian soccer club at $566 million. 

The group will acquire the stake from Atalanta’s largest shareholder, the Percassi family, which owns roughly 86% of the club through its holding company, La Dea. 

Atalanta joins Inter Milan, Genoa, AC Milan, Fiorentina, Spezia, AS Roma, and Venezia as Serie A clubs under American ownership, with three of the investments made in the past year. 

• U.S. investor Robert Platek acquired Spezia for an undisclosed amount last February.
• In May 2021, Oaktree Capital agreed to buy a 31% stake in Inter Milan for $336 million. 
• Miami-based 777 Partners acquired Genoa C.F.C. for $175 million last September.

Atalanta has emerged as one of Europe’s top clubs, finishing third in Serie A in each of the last three seasons. The club also reached the quarterfinals of the 2020 UEFA Champions League. 

The success allowed Atalanta to report a full-year profit of $58 million in 2020, despite Serie A clubs collectively suffering a loss of $855 million during that year, up from $331 million in 2019. 

Renewed Interest

Last November, Apax Partners renewed its interest in investing in Serie A after consideration in 2020. The private equity firm is partnering with other potential investors on a plan to inject fresh capital into Serie A to alleviate financial losses from the past year.