What on earth does that mean? $2 million is not 4 times less than $9 million. Four times $9 million is $36 million, so $36 million less than $9 million means the girls would be paying $27 million vs getting paid $2 million. The gals get (roughly) 1/4 of what the guys get, not “4 times less” - all over the lamestream news today.
You might want to join in on this thread from last week or so. “X times less” colloquially seems to mean original figure divided by X, so $2 million would be four times less than $9 million. (Actually, it’d be 4 times less than $8 million.) No, it’s not a usage I like, but I don’t think it has any other meaning.
I’m not a huge fan of trying to equate women’s sports with men’s sports because in most cases . . . .heh . . . . lets be honest, there’s no comparison, but from what I can gather the USWNT is claiming they generate a lot more revenue then the Men’s squad, yet get less salary; if that’s proven true I’m on their side.
Yeah, it’s a clumsy construct, but I knew what it meant, too.
I think those revenue figures are from last year when the women played in a highly visible World Cup, and the men didn’t, so it may not represent a long-term trend. In fact, Alex Morgan said that in an interview I heard on the BBC.
To get that the USMNT players earn 8 times as more as than USWNT players whilst the former generate more revenue takes a very selective reading of the figures. The USWNT generated more than the USMNT last year as it was a Women’s World Cup year, however over of a 4-year WC cycle the USMNT typical generates about twice as much revenue than the USWNT. However the idea that the men earn 4 times more than the women comes from comparing the bonuses/fees paid to the team is World Cup years. The USMNT earned $9 million prize money for getting to the round of 16 in 2014, whereas the USWNT earned $2 million prize money for winning the WWC in 2015. The prize monies are set by FIFA and the fact that the prize money in the WC is so much greater the WWC is because the former is vastly more lucrative.
Another dimension is that payments to players for international games in men’s soccer is often dwarfed by what they earn from club football. For example the English national team players (who generate much more revenue than the USMNT and I expect get quite a bit more money) donate their fees and bonuses from England to charity. Whilst the wages for women’s club soccer are paltry compared to men’s (but again a reflection of the financial reality), there are a select few players in women’s soccer whose income is vastly boosted by endorsements and sponsorship.
IIRC US Soccer pays a salary to the women in addition to game fees while the men only get game fees.
I think the women should get the same per diem and fly on the same planes and all that, but this is PR theater in order to negotiate a better CBA, not actual pay discrimination.
The major disparity comes from the bonuses in the World Cup this is because the prize fund in the men’s World Cup is 38 times larger than in the Women’s World Cup, where the worst team in the WC gets 4 times as much as the winners of the WWC.
Should USSF make up the shortfall? That hardly seems fair as, whilst the USSF are hardly impoverished, they aren’t the richest national association either and it would directing funds from youth development into the pockets of the USWNT players. It already subsidizes the salaries of USWNT players as women’s professional club soccer pays poverty wages.
Should FIFA pay equal bonus money? About 1/8 of the revenue FIFA gets from the WC goes into the bonus money fund and the WC itself is the main source of FIFA’s revenue. Bringing the WWC bonus fund up to the level of the WC bonus fund would be spending vastly more money earned by the WWC purely on bonuses and the amount of money would not be insignificant, even to FIFA. FIFA subsidizes women’s soccer too.
The idea of equal work for equal pay doesn’t really hold up in professional sport, there are plenty of men’s players playing similar schedules to USWNT players who are paid less. In professional sport there is a strong (but not absolute) link between revenue generation and player earnings.
This is turning into a little Twitter spat between the USMNT and the USWNT. Since I think their cause relies on them winning the PR battle I can’t imagine that helps. Sunil Gulati isn’t going to bring up that Hope Solo is an alcoholic domestic abuser that steals US Soccer property to go on joy rides, but Clint Dempsey or Jozy Altidore might.
I’ve seen this issue addressed on TV and the internet a few times in the past few days. Not once did they bring up the actual comparative revenue so I suspect that women’s soccer just doesn’t make money like the men’s game. If it does, they need better representatives to tell their story.
I’ve seen numbers for 2015 where the women earned more. However, that’s a WC year for them so it’s not apples to apples.
The women also posted a “cycle” group of revenue that’s something like $61 million for the men and $50 million for the women. However that assumed that the women win gold in the olympics and then sell out on a victory tour and ignores the men’s participation in the Copa America this summer.
Another complication is that US Soccer negotiates the television for the men and women together so it’s hard to attribute the revenue for one team or the other. Apparently the ratings for the men are generally two or three times as high as for the women though.
This whole thing may come down to, are the women entitled to any share of the money FIFA gave U.S. Soccer for participating in the men’s World Cup? If so, the women might point out that money that universities earn from the TV contracts for the College Football Playoff and the Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament (BTW, the NCAA pockets all of the money from all of the other TV contracts, including the women’s tournament) has to be spent proportionally by the schools on women’s sports.
Well the issue there is that the USMNT’s current CBA was signed in 2015, while the USWNT’s current CBA was signed in 2013 (and there is some dispute whether it’s still in effect), so obviously the per diem would be slightly different. The planes should be equalized, but part of that is the collective bargaining process.
A lot of it is muddied by the fact that the NWSL is run by US Soccer, mostly because there was no private investors that wanted to get involved, and US Soccer wanted a women’s pro soccer league for its players.
All in all, it means that some judge is going to have to spend a lot of time disentangling the money to find out exactly how much US Soccer spends on both the men’s and women’s game. And how much does the salaries they are paying for NWSL apply… and would an adverse ruling impact just how involved US Soccer will be in running a women’s soccer league? These are all important and interesting questions, but the press isn’t really interested in delving too much into it.
Right. Screaming discrimination is going to get a lot more page views than actually reporting on the facts.