Equal pay

[Unregistered]

Not as cut and dry as it sounds. This article sheds some light:

https://www.boston.com/sports/soccer...-men-world-cup

"The bottom line: When it comes to revenue from games, the women’s national soccer team has held its own against the men’s team since the 2015 World Cup win. But games account for only one-quarter of USSF revenue. Sponsorships make up half, and it’s hard to determine what the women’s team contributed to USSF without more data."

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The biggest thing is they aren't paid in the same manner, not necessarily at the same rate. Women draw a salary, men only get bonuses. I think their gripe has more validity with FIFA, not USSoccer. The discrepancy for winning the WC is like 10X for men. THAT's the problem. Unknowledgeable politicians weighing in that they women are getting the shaft (not literally in some cases) frankly is outside their purview. It's not a United States problem they can fix with legislation.

And FIFA makes mountains of cash from the 3.5billion eyeballs that watch the mens world cup. The women, while growing, had 1B this time. Ad dollars, sponsorships, ticket sales (many of the women's games were half empty) - it all adds up to a much bigger "pie" for the men, as many call it

[Unregistered]

WaPo had a fact checking piece as well that looked at multiple angles.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.fac0a44c693b

"The Bottom Line

When it comes to revenue from games, the women’s national soccer team has held its own against the men’s team since the 2015 World Cup win. But games account for only one-quarter of USSF revenue. Sponsorships make up half, and it’s hard to determine what the women’s team contributed to USSF without more data.

Are the women players paid less? Sometimes. When the female players have appeared to make about the same or more money, they’ve had to turn in consistently outstanding performances on the world stage. Even with those feats, earning the same amount as the men’s soccer players was near-impossible under the previous collective-bargaining agreement.

The new agreement has provisions that may reduce the difference in bonuses for friendly games and tournaments, but there is — without question and for whatever reasons — still a massive gap between men’s and women’s World Cup bonuses."

As was said the men's bonuses are larger because the take for the men's WC is substantially larger. That is a FIFA issue, however, it's also justifiable.

[Unregistered]

The equal pay argument is stupid as the men's and women's pay structure is far different, with the women actually having the better deal.

In effect, the women are treated like employees. They get a salary, benefits, continue to get paid if they are injured and cannot participate, etc. They have some job security.

The men are treated like hired guns. If they are on a roster for a game, they get paid. If they are out due to injuries or don't get picked for a particular game or have a conflict, they don't get a dime. There is zero job security because the assumption is that they are making their real money from their pro teams.

Yes, the men have the potential to make more, far more, but the trade off is that if things go wrong, they don't get any money at all. Considering the far lower salaries of the women's pro leagues, this guaranteed safety net benefits the women tremendously. If they really want to be "equal" and have the women get paid strictly on performance in games, you would see women's participation in the USWNT plummet as many of the current players could no longer afford to commit to the schedule with no steady income as part of it.

[Unregistered]

^^ Good point. Men if you don't play, you don't get paid. Women are on a salary.

There's security with salary vs. bonus structure; typically that security means taking a bit less.

[Unregistered]

This is a terrible post. Most of your arguments (haha, sorry, your daughter's) are not directly relevant. Here is the bottom line -- the national teams are monopolies granted by the governing organizations. The players on the USWNT have no other way to sell their services - trust me, I'm sure if this was a free market our players could make many, many multiples to play for another federation. So, it's really hard to say sure, you're massively successful, global ambassadors with unbelievable Q scores (I mean, could your average person name *one* USMNT player?) but we're going to pay you a fraction of the men.

On your direct points, the USSF derive their revenue from many sources, one of which is television rights; however, they include many things, such as the $24.6 million Nike paid last year as sponsor. Do you think Nike doesn't value the women's team equally, if not more than, the men's team? A huge chunk of USSF revenue recently was from the Copa American Centenario. Sure, this was a men's tournament, and it was great seeing the MNT reach the semis, but is this revenue related to US Soccer generally, or that MNT specifically? Really, we get that tournament because we're the USA, just like we're getting the World Cup, not because of our MNT (frankly in spite of our MNT). All those revenues need to go into a coffer and then pay the men and women national teams equally for equal work, full stop.

reposting

[Unregistered]

that's a lot of supposition, so here goes facts and data, derived from the US Soccer Federation audited financial statements:

1. you are incorrect about the sponsorship. the nike sponsorship is a catch-all. $16mm is a "base fee" so only nike knows who they value more. nike merch royalties only totalled $5.2mm and who knows who sold more. other sponsorships are not material.

2. game revenues (ex Copa) total less than 25% of total revenues. However, importantly, the US women total attendance in 2018 was 253,151, versus US men total attendance of 169,141. Yes, the men averaged more (24k vs 14k) but the women played more games and drew more total paying customers, so hard to say they didn't make more money for the USSF.

3. the final piece of this puzzle is the marketing agreement with Soccer United Marketing (SUM). this is a totally opaque agreement that covers a whole host of marketing, including *both* the national teams AND MLS. It's a flat amount with no disclosure as to the constituent components, but clearly a lot is related to MLS, given the sheer # of games that are played relative to the 7 home matches the USMNT played in 2018.

The amounts of #1-3 represent about 75% of USSF revenues, with another 10% coming from registration fees, and other revenues. Easy to say that of the remaining 25% of revenue, the bulk in non-national team related.

So in summary, 25% of revenue comes from sponsorship that doesn't seem to be skewed by gender, 25% of revenue comes from tickets where the women outsell the men, 25% of the revenue comes from a marketing agreement that frankly has parts of the MLS included, and 25% comes from non-national team related revenue.

Really hard to see your argument that somehow the halo effect of the USMNT means they should get paid more. Also really hard to see how a "bargaining table" works in a monopoly, when you can't sell your services to the highest bidder.

reposting #2 (in response to misinformation a few posts back). and everyone knows the wapost fact checker is literally the dumbest guy on the planet.