US women soccer players want equal pay to US men's team.

If they really want to discuss equality, then why do they not propose destroying the divide between Men's and Women's teams and having unified teams? Whoever is the best makes it, man or woman.

As you all know, I'm not being serious, as we'are all aware of what would happen in such a situation. The reason is due to differences in, purely objective terms, quality. Male football players, on average, are significantly better than female football players, on average. You cannot just wash away these differences. Such a sham attempt for equality that really only impinges on other's freedoms.

 

One other nugget from USSF conf call. From 2011-15,avg attendance for #usmnt games: 29,781. Avg attendance for #uswnt in same period: 16,229

— Jeff Carlisle (@JeffreyCarlisle) April 1, 2016

You're going to make me look this up aren't you? ;-) #usmnt: 89; #uswnt: 119. https://t.co/m3ZuaEOxiP

— Jeff Carlisle (@JeffreyCarlisle) April 1, 2016

 

Can't wait to see the transcript from the USSF conference call. Someone please link if they see it.

 

As someone who has been a witness on these types of things for litigation, it's not nearly that simple. The women's argument is that they are doing the same thing. The USSF's is that they aren't doing the same thing because they are different markets. The USSF is correct. The only question is how different they are.

The consolidated financials only provide so much guidance. Appearance fees are one piece and the most straightforward. Revenue splits will need to be done on the broadcast rights. First on how much SUM is paying for each event, and then secondly on how much of what they are paying for is driven by the teams themselves. The women will argue that they drove big numbers in WC2015. USSF will argue that those numbers were driven by proximity of the event to the country rather than the team itself. The women didn't bring in those ratings, FIFA did by putting the WC in Canada just over the border. They'll say the prior two WCs didn't broadcast nearly as well. Then they'll point to the men's numbers in BRA, GER, and SA as evidence of that. And the USSF will be right.

The women will counter that an average non-US WC men's game already has a higher rating than the same for women, so that needs to be accounted for when looking at the ratings both teams bring. And the women will be right.

The interesting argument are the profits of both teams. Men's profits are lower because more is spent on the team. On its face this looks like a problem for the USSF, but it isn't. The men's game is more mature and competitive globally. More needs to be spent to maintain competitiveness (the separate market argument). This also ties into wages. The USSF argument is that they must pay the men more to retain their services because of the wage levels in their primary jobs. The strength of those wages would keep players away for loss of future earnings due to NT injury, etc if their NT pay was lower. The WNT on the other hand probably makes more on the NT than they do for their clubs.

Being employed by a more profitable business segment doesn't necessarily mean the employees of that segment should be paid more. The question is what other things are driving those profit margins for each segment. A senior production engineer for a car company will make a lot of money. The car market is very competitive and the margins suck. That engineer's salary is just part of doing business in that market.

My hunch is that the USSF wouldn't lose a thing if they wanted to drag this out in court. Their PR would suffer. Both sides will figure something out behind the scenes in time for the Olympics so USSF can make this go away.

 

This just boils down to a combination of the capitalistic attitude of fighting for every dollar by every means necessary and yes some emotional false sense of persecution from historical circumstances that don't reflect present ones.

In entertainment it's pretty cut and dry, barring monopolies or lack of unions/collective bargaining (which there was in this case) to compensate - you get what you draw.

To wit, the backlash over the supposedly unfair earnings gap never made sense in Hollywood. They had agents who fought to get them every dollar they could from producers. If they couldn't get any more, it's because there wasn't enough of a clamor to see them at the box office. Why would there be less of a clamor on average to see women as opposed to men at the box office? Things like period pieces where the main characters a high majority of time were men (HIStory) and action movies which are the biggest revenue generators which would naturally feature lead males. I can be sold on an anomaly with superpowers in a single story like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or iZombie. I ate that stuff up. But on a macro-level, people would think it would look ridiculous if the studios tried to make Rose McIver or Sarah Michelle Gellar the next Statham or Schwarzenegger. Nobody would buy into it. You have to work a little bit to suspend your disbelief as is.

We could expand this to the unfair pay gap conversation in this country, as it is a hot topic right now, and you'd figure was an inspiration for this lawsuit. This Harvard professor of economics, who is female btw, lays out why it is by and large a myth, and the stats that have been bandied out are simplistic and ignore important variables. Such as men work more hours per week on average and seek higher paying fields, largely motivated by the interests of raising children. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/harvard-prof.-takes-down-gender-wage-gap-myth/article/2580405
At one time it was true, but it hasn't been for a while now. It's an antiquated belief. But like I said, people will use whatever tool they can to get as much of the pie as they can, and paradigms take time to break.

 

This is actually a valid approach and fairly quantifiable. The question isn't how much money an event featuring the men or women generates. The question is how much of that money they generate.

The issue really isn't how many other teams fans bring to the game. It's total fans - fans there to see USA - fans of other teams who are only there because their team is playing USA = fans that are they really only because their team is playing.

Take exhibitions and Gold Cup games featuring various teams in non-US featured matches. You can run statistical approaches on this to say Guat, Honduras, etc bring X fans in a non-US game and that the location of the game will drive that base up or down X or Y (based upon market share, ethnic composition of the region). Maybe Honduras might bring 6K to a game.

Vs. the US, the stadium might have 50K. 20K might be Honduras fans, but you really only need to subtract that 6K base.

 

I actually mentioned this at BS in 2002 after seeing the differences in bonuses from Mens' Qfinals vs Women winning in '99.

 

Two more compelling argument for women is for them to get more of a similar revenue/profit split, whatever those revenues/profits are.

The most compelling argument against women is that an individual female soccer player of any country has essentially no economic worth and the income that these players generate for themselves as part of the USWNT is mostly - if not entirely - is due to them wearing a US crest on their shirts. In other words, without the political pressure, the USSF could just shrug its shoulders and tell the females to go seek better pay in an open marketplace. Let them tour as the US Americans and see how much money they can make off that. The USSF could then offer players a choice of being on the USWNT for its current pay or field a nominally competitive organization. That would, obviously, end quickly, as a commercial female soccer is simply not a viable business.

 

I think Carly Lloyd should ask USSF to pay her as much as Barcelona pays Messi or Real Madrid pays Ronaldo. It's equal work, after all.

 

yeah, that too.

 

This is a very interesting and very involved subject.

If the women are wanting equal pay for equal work, would they be willing to split their pay with that of their opponents for friendlies in the US IF their opponent earns less money (base, not counting win bonuses) for that game? The Costa Rican women were doing the exact same work for the same period of time during those friendlies, so surely they should be earning the same amount of money for work done in the US (minus win bonuses). Their opponents pay per game is certainly a more apples to apples comparison than the men's pay, minus the entity signing the check.

IIRC some of the WNT members draw salaries directly from the Fed, and some do not. Would the salaried women on the WNT be willing to give up those salaried positions and be subject to the same vagaries of getting called and paid just like the men and the rest of the WNT pool and risk being put out to pasture when appropriate? Guaranteed spots and pay for some women but not others seems just as unfair as pay discrepancies between the men's and women's teams. Should the women copy the men and only send U23 to the Olympics which further spread the wealth and exposure as happens in the men's game? I am talking theory and fairness, not FIFA regulations.

Do the women deserve more pay? Maybe, it is a complex subject and I would not want to commit to an answer either way at this point. Would the women be willing to break away from USSF and form their own fed (assume FIFA approval), market themselves, support the youth women's programs, and keep and use all their revenue as they see fit? If they are truly being underpaid with respect to the revenue they bring in it would seem to be a good idea.

If they are making the argument that they should make more because of the share of money they bring in, that makes sense if the numbers support it. I wonder if they would support that same argument in college athletics and apply it to men's football and basketball. I wonder if they would give up some of the women's soccer scholarships to the men's soccer programs until they reach parity? (NCAA not withstanding)

I support the positions on field and hotel quality.

As for travel, I do not know what the current policy is, but I think it should be based somewhat on time and distance traveled. Also the effect of the travel on the player when he/she returns and competes for spots on this club team. A guy flying back and forth from Germany to Honduras probably and needing to perform to keep his spot on German Club FC probably needs/deserves first class more than somebody flying round trip from Chicago to St. Louis for a friendly.

 

The other thing is what's the difference in ticket prices, because holy crap MNT games are getting to be NFL level prices lately.

I paid 40 bucks to get into USA/Mexico in Columbus in '05. IIRC the cheapest ticket to the Turkey friendly in '14 was $90.

 

Are the TV rights sold separately for the Women's World Cup or is it thrown in with the Men's? I always heard that the TV deal for the men's World Cup included the women's with a stipulation that the Women's game must be shown, and by that I think FIFA actually said that.

Nobody remembers the field that the USMNT played on in Suprissa,Costa Rica. That field was terrible.

 

As far as the World Cup payment by FIFA goes, I think it was pretty fair. For me the only thing in question is profit sharing. As far as I know the Women's World Cup profits aren't made public by FIFA. If FIFA allocates x% of their profits to the men's tournament prize pool, they should allocate equal to the women's. Whether or not they did so, nobody but them knows.

Total prize money for the women's World Cup: $15 million. Total for men's Wold Cup: $576 million.
http://www.politico.eu/article/world-cup-women-pay-gap-gender-equality/

The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Fox Sports was poised to receive, “upwards of $17 million in sponsorship revenue for [The 2015 Women’s World Cup].”

The sponsor revenue for the 2014 Men’s World Cup, $529 million. That is 31 times greater than the women’s event.

Critics point to the fact that the winning team of 2014 World Cup, Germany, received $35 million, while the American women’s team which was victorious in Sunday’s final were given 17.5 times less, $2 million.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/06/w...-compared-to-male-counterparts/#ixzz44WjQEw12

The winning U.S. women received 13.33% of their tournaments prize pool. The winning German men received 6.08% of their tournaments prize pool. If anybody got shafted here it is the other participating women's teams.

 

Yeah, the WWC rights are bundled by FIFA, along with youth tournaments, with the WC rights. FIFA says they can't even breakout revenue from the WWC, likely because of this practice. The US is probably the only country where they could sell the rights seperately.

The way it works now is that SUM takes a certain amount off the top for the rights it sells and then gets 30% of the revenue over that undisclosed figure. So MLS owners are making money off the USWNT's friendlies and qualifiers.

The Stevens act argument about "equitable" financial support is going to be interesting if raised. What is equitable support and will it involve getting into the nitty gritty of who should get credit for international friendlies played in the US and things of that ilk.

An FS1 exec said they expected to net $17 million from the WWC but got more like $40, of course that windfall doesn't come back to the fed or the women. He said they valued the WWC at "almost" the same as the Men's, which is PR spin. Why would they pay $106.25 million for an event ($425 million divided by two Men's and two Women's WCs) where they only expected to pull in $17 and were happy about $40. I wonder how much Telemundo valued each event in its $600 million bid.

 

WNT players under contract with USSF sign only ONE contract that covers both their WNT play and their club play (as USSF allocates the players to the NWSL and pays their club salary), so USSF holds all the power there.

As for CBA negotiations, I think this suit has a rather significant link to the those negotiations, and the public opinion that is outraged on their behalf can be a bargaining chip for them (whether it was a wise choice to take this all public is another matter). I'd suggest that this is obviously a ploy in the ongoing lawsuit that USSF filed earlier this year against the USWNTPA about whether or not there is even an active CBA in place right now (USSF contends there is; the PA contends there isn't). There hasn't really been an actual CBA for the WNT negotiated since 2005 although an addendum to that CBA was signed in 2012 (thus the contention of whether the addendum is a valid CBA or not). Even if the 2012 agreement was a valid CBA, then still a new CBA is supposed to be signed at the end of this year/beginning of next year. They've been in discussions/negotiations since the end of 2015. I'd argue that this is all part of it, and the players want to make a statement/ploy while they have the eyes on them. I don't think the women are so out of touch with reality that they think they'll actually get equal pay, but they certainly have a good argument that they deserve more than they're getting.

 

Here it is: http://www.si.com/planet-futbol/2016/03/31/sunil-gulati-uswnt-equal-pay-wage-discrimination-lawsuit#

 

I am not a lawyer but I do play one on TV.

They say they want equal pay for equal work. Well, I might be a backwoods lawyer from a small humble neighborhood but is it really equal work?

Is beating the likes of Japan ladies and German ladies in the women's World Cup really the same as beating Brazil and Argentina in the Men's World Cup?

Let's sit and analyze this for a few minutes...

 

And keeping with the US teams comparison...
...is advancing from a Group of Australia, Sweden and Nigerian ladies really the same as advancing from a Group with Ghana, Portgual and Germany in the men's tourney?

Put our thinking caps on.

 

In a sense yes, but look at it another way. I worked for a very well known large company. We had plenty of money and profit, but underperformed compared to promise and expectation. In our organization, compensation was tied to what each division brought in. When the company pulled back in our space, revenue and what we had available to pay to our people in salary suffered, while lower performers in other growth areas could get much more. Obviously there are other dynamics, I could transfer internally or leave as I did, but we had other units that brought in more than ours and despite my performance being in the top 10% of the company standardized across business units, there wasn't market rate compensation available to me when I was promoted. Instead, I had to let people go.

I wasn't part of a CBA either. The WNT negotiated and agreed those terms. I understand them being upset, I really do. I'm just not sure why the relationship has become so sour. This isn't a simple pay equality case for that reason to me.

 

I would hate to pile on here too, but pulling financials from 2015 is also misleading. If you pull from 2014 or even this year with the Copa and World Cup Qualifiers on the men's side it would not look so good. TV rights are bundled too so you have to ask what Fox, ESPN and the like are actually buying and what the rate might be if the WNT and WWC rights were sold separately. I am sure that the WNT does generate a fair chunk of revenue, particularly in a WC year, and that the team can and should get a larger share of that money. I do wonder however if the quest for more detailed financials might paint a worse picture however.

 

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/socce...791.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory&soc_trk=tw

 

As someone who doesn't have any experience with this stuff, I appreciate your opinion and your explanation here

 

Have you seen the 'grass' the men's team plays in in Seattle or Houston or Foxboro or East Rutherford? Careful what you wish for.

 

"During the last four years, the men's national team revenues have been significantly higher than the women's national team's," Buethe said. "The numbers provided in the complaint are at times inaccurate, misleading or even both."

What a joke of a situation. I wouldn't doubt if this ends up with the USWNT shooting themselves in the foot. They have no basis for argument. They're simply upset that life is not the way they want it to be. Disgusting.