SPOILER ALERT! Stop reading now, if you plan on watching the Olympics tonight.

Congratulations to The U.S. Women’s Soccer team! They beat Japan today in their gold medal match. What you may not know is that they also won more CA$H than the rest of the USA Gold Medal Winners. That’s right! Customarily our gold medal winners receive $25,000 but the president of the U.S. Soccer Federation, Sunil Gulati announced yesterday that if Team U.S.A. won, they would split an additional bonus of $1.5 million. CHA-CHING!

There are officially 18 players on our team but Sunil said he expects that they will share the money with their trainers, and reserve players who didn’t make the official U.S. Olympic team. So if they DO split it equally and give the trainers and reserve players an equal share, each player will walk away with $50,000.  That’s on top of the $25,000 bonus the U.S. Olympic Committee gives every one of our athletes that win a gold medal.

They all have to pay taxes on their gold medal bonuses. (As far as the silver medal winners go we know they get a smaller bonus but they didn’t announce how much that bonus is.)

To our U.S. Athletes (& most of us), $75,000 seems like a lot of money…BUT its chump change compared to how much other countries are paying their gold medal winners. Check this out…

Italy pays their athletes more than any other country competing. Each of their gold medalists gets $182,400.  Russia comes in second place. Each of their gold medal winners receives $135,000. France pays $65,200. Japan pays $35,900. China pays $31,400. The United States pays $25,000 & Canada and Germany pay around $20,000.Oh & before you call USA, Canada & Germany “cheap”…

Our gracious host country, Great Britain, which has accumulated 22 gold medals so far doesn’t seem to think their gold medalists deserve ANY bonuses. Their gold medal winners do not receive ANY bonuses for bringing home a gold medal or ANY medal for that matter.