I’m guessing beach volleyball.
There are only two possible arguments for paying women’s soccer team players as much as is paid men:
-
The women are equal in ability to men ad would at least play the men to a draw. This is clearly not the case. The fact that the women have a better record against women than the men have against men is irrelevant.
OR
The women’s team brings in as much spectators’ money as does the men’s team.
This is implied, but not demonstrate, to be true by
SCR4’s point that the women’s team has better TV ratings.
Even more telling is CHEFGUY’s point that, in Portland, both the men and women sell out a 20,000-seat stadium. While this does not demonstrate that the women would—or would not—elicit as much spectator money as do the men in a larger stadium, it is the best evidence we have (as is the case with tennis)—and does justify the claim that the women deserve equal pay.
The women’s team’s record has earned by playing against women has nothing to do with it.
NOTE: Jasmine writes: People like to watch a good product and the women’s team (is a better product).”
The demonstration that this is correct would be equal spectator money paid for women’s games.
This may well be the case. But the spectator spending, not simply a claim that “people like to watch a good produce” is what demonstrates that this is the case.
Pay the women more. Cut the men’s salaries. Makes jackshit difference.
Playing internationals matches is an honour for Male players. It’s a job for women.
If you are a Male player, the money you get paid for internationals is minuscule* as a proportion of what you earn. It’s not your main source of income, that’s your club. Being called up by your team only has an indirect financial reward, in that your value as a player rises.
If you are a woman, it’s really the only money you earn.
Pay them more.
*Many national teams donate their match fees to charity.
This fact isn’t quite true. I should have checked it before following it up, in a post above. It turns out that the Thorns only average 17K fans per home match. They have sold the stadium out on a few occasions, but usually don’t. Still, that 17K is almost twice the average attendance of the next best NWSL team.
Also, the stadium was 21K, but it’s being remodeled and will accommodate 25K when they next play there in a couple months.
pretty sure the big tennis tournaments such as US Open, Wimbledon, and so on now give the same prize money for men and women. Probably not the same for smaller tourneys.
What was the men’s attendance?
The Timbers have sold out every home game they’ve played in MLS. In fact they have an extremely long waiting list for season tickets, over 10,000 according to reports.
That is one reason why the Thorns have such high attendance (for their league, that is). The two teams have the same ownership, so they have a large database of potential soccer fans to market the women’s team to. And I expect a lot of people who couldn’t get Timbers tickets bought Thorns tickets as a substitute.
NWSL and MLS attendance don’t really have to do with what the USSF pays people, but their average figures for 2018 were 6,024 and 21,873.
In 2018-19 the USMNT drew about double the USWNT per game, but the women played about twice as many games. Total attendance was pretty equal.
Where do we even start with this…
According to you. But that does not make it a fact. It’s two different versions of the sport, played in parallel, not the same. As such, you judge the team on how they play in their version of the sport. The women are demonstrably more successful than the men.
You seem to be unaware that in big league and international football, the clubs and country make money from TV rights, not bums on stadium seats. There’s a reason the English Premier League, for example, is the most wealthy league in the world - it sells its TV rights around the globe. If you don’t understand this, then you don’t understand how football makes money.
By this metric, the women should be paid more than the men.
There is a clause in the USWNT contract that if they are ever paid less than the men as a percentage of revenue earned they will get a lump sum payment to equalize the revenue.
If the women bring in more revenue, as you seem to be asserting, there shouldn’t be a pay discrepancy. US Soccer, meanwhile, has repeatedly said that the men bring in significantly more money than the women, 2-3x as much.
My oops. But yeah, visiting teams are always in awe of the size of the crowd.
The last time this came up it was because of a Daily Show segment about the women’s team and their lawsuit. It was pretty damning. But I remember seeing other sources that pointed out how cherry picked their points were. Like comparing ratings during a woman’s World Cup year with a men’s non-World Cup year. I wish I could find the articles I read then. But bottom line is that the men’s team does bring in more money over time but the women’s team has spikes in revenue that can surpass the men’s team. The game might be the same but there are many things in the way the various leagues and tournaments are run as well as how the pay is distributed (salary vs per game etc) that make it very hard to make a direct comparison. It’s not like basketball where every year they play the same schedule against the same team in the same locations and it can be compared with data from the men’s team.
I’ve played soccer (footie) on a number of levels and am in favor of capitalistic systems…That said, I think both national teams should receive a flat rate. I don’t think it should be a lot. Their main salary should still be whatever employment they have outside the national teams.
But any kind of ‘prize money’ is going to be affected by capitalism and the needs of the Soccer federation. Obviously the Mens World Cup teams will probably receive much more prize money then the womens.
IOW: I do believe the women should receive as much as the men in terms of flat rate payment for games. I do not in terms of any prize money the Federations may or may not dole out to the players. Unless we’re talking pcts.
I was not able to determine from a quick search if the Timbers’ (Men) ticket prices were the same as the Thorn (Women’s) were. Comparable attendance is interesting, but if the men’s game tickets cost much more then the women’s games do then, of course, the men should be paid more. I don’t know what the ticket prices were for either, but that seems to be a key piece of information we don’t have.