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

I have one question:

What constitutes "fair"?

Be specific.

 

I would actually argue that FIFA controls and monetizes the TV rights for World Cups, so those viewing numbers are less relevant for revenue generation. Those revenues come back to the USSF through the prize money from the World Cup. I would imagine that is the biggest reason for the vast differences in prize money.

On a different note, I was reading on the Guardian that it looks like Canada 2015 will have more tickets sold than this expanded World Cup. That's not a good sign.

 

You don’t know what the word “sports” means.

I’m trying to help here...do you mean “competitions?”

Football and basketball are different sports which is why I made the Raptors/Patriots analogy. Men’s soccer and women’s soccer are LITERALLY the same sport.

 

I would respectfully say fair is pretty much irrelevant. The two relevant things are power (Fed vs. women and Fed vs. men) and civil rights law.

I get irritated at the bullshit narratives around fair, and the women’s public arguments are especially eye rolling. But they’ll win or lose based on power and the law.

 

Great. Regarding your answer, what is the relevant civil rights issue at play here, and how do you square the two entirely different existing compensation mechanisms with it given the agreements that are in place?

I'd like chief cherry-pick accuser to take a hack at either that last one or the original "fair" question.

 

Except men are forbidden from playing woman's soccer. That's a big difference. Technically, there is no such thing as "Men's Soccer" since it is also open to women, or any other gender, who are good enough.

 

Actually, what I said was that it wouldn't make sense to justify compensating one set of players more than another based on the drawing power of the opposing team.

For example, arguing that Shaq Moore personally "brought in more revenue" as starting right back in the Mexico friendly (in comparison to the starting right back in the sparsely attended Panama or Bosnia friendlies) would clearly be nonsensical.

Given that a signficant amount of USMNT game revenue overall seems to be (directly or indirectly) linked to the popularity of other men's soccer teams, the relevance of the point should be obvious.

So national teams are considered the equivalent of salespeople, paid on commission? That's.... kind of bizarre.

I mean, if that's how we're looking at it, maybe we should give Shaq Moore a big bonus for all the thousands of fans he personally helped bring out to that Mex. friendly. True, a bunch of those fans may have been wearing green shirts - but the sales figures don't lie, right?

 

Gender discrimination, obviously. That’s the charge in the lawsuit.

I don’t. IANAL, but it seems weird to me to sue now. (As a legal matter. As a PR move, sure. But that just reiterates what i believe the women’s strategy is.). To me, the time to sue is during the next negotiations.

 

Can't really blame the effort. The fact the men didn't qualify for Russia and the women are the favs to win the WC this year makes this a golden opportunity for the women to cherry pick data to make the revenue look more even then it is. It would be really dumb not to go for it. The national team is basically their club team.

Does the fed bundle the women/men's team together when negotiating tv/sponsorship deals?

 

Ok, leaving aside the PR stunt aspect...what gives that charge merit given all that we know?

 

Sold as a package, via SUM, right?

 

For the longest time, it definitely benefitted the women's game to do it this way, but I wonder if the USWNT could stand alone now and if that might actually increase the revenue?

 

Actually, it does make sense. The mens' opponents draw fans in the US because they're some of the best athletes in the world. That's relevant because it's who the men compete against. Granted, part of it has to do with immigrant groups in the US--but then again those same immigrants don't turn out in anything close to the same numbers to see the Mexican or Honduran or Jamaican women's teams play in the US. And high-profile men's teams even from countries with relatively small immigrant communities in the US like Germany, Argentina, Spain, etc still draw well. Why? Because they're the best athletes in the world, and the fact that the men compete against them and the women don't means it isn't equal work.

 

Possibly. I think the relative value of the non-US games probably still drags it down, plus non-WC and non-Olympic ratings are still pretty abysmal.

 

If this is the case they should be pushing for more separation and collectively bargain for a % of gross revenues if they actually believe they are getting screwed by the US Fed money wise. It's kind of awkward that the Fed is basically running a professional club team, so it should be probably bargained like this anyway.

Isn't the USWNT already highest paying club team in Women's Soccer?

 

Is this a general question for the group, or to me?

If it's the latter, I dunno. I don't have an opinion on the strength of their case. Well, I have an opinion, but I'll be honest and say I'm far from an expert on the subject matter or the facts, so my opinion ain't worth much.

I can only repeat that the timing is strange. To me, if the legal argument was strong they would have made it at the negotiations. Making it now allows the Fed's lawyers to say, we have a contract here. They should refile at the next negotiation.

 

I repped this because it's a point I meant to make but never got around to. However, I believe this is only half right.

We can draw 80,000 for a friendly with Mexico, in the right city. I'll bet Mexico gets a bunch more money for such a friendly than if we play Slovenia and have to hold it in a 20,000 seat arena. Us being able to do that is not any kind of evidence about USMNT vs. USWNT.

But even when you use comparables (German's national teams, for example) the men outdraw the women because men's team sports are a lot more popular in the world than women's team sports.

Here's the other half. The best female soccer players ARE among the best athletes in the world, just like the best men's players. The women's game is behind, so it's not an equivalency. But it's comparable now, and will be equivalent in a generation or so as the women's game catches up.

 

The group (but in case you had any ideas...)

 

Your 3rd paragraph is the key point--men's team sports are more popular than women's virtually everywhere precisely because the level of play and athleticism is higher, and that isn't ever going to change. There's also nothing the WNT or anyone else can do about it other than trying to shame and berate people into spending money following the women's game, which is going to turn off as many people (myself included) as it persuades.

As for the women being the best athletes, or more accurately the best female athletes--that's more or less true in the US, where soccer is one of the two most popular team sports for young girls and the other, basketball, requires exceptional physical attributes to play at the highest level (NCAA D1 or WNBA). The USWNT is also by far the most popular and visible women's sports team in the country, only a handful of more popular college basketball teams like UConn and Tennessee come anywhere close (most people probably can't name a single WNBA team). On the other hand, the best male athletes in the US generally do not play soccer as we all know.

I would imagine that that pattern is true in most other countries as well--ie, most of the best female athletes play soccer unless they're tall enough to play basketball at a high level. Although, individual and Olympic sports seem to get a bigger share of high-level athletes (as compared to team sports) on the women's side than on the men's.

 

The general consensus of those anti equal pay is that Women's soccer is inferior product vs Mens and thus should not receive equal pay. That WMNT lost to a bunch of 15 year olds makes them horrible soccer players not worthy of additional money. Yet people watch this horrible product and revenue generated is in dispute but at least in the same ballpark.

Do you have a daughter that plays competitive soccer? do you understand their sacrifices to be an elite athlete? Do you think it's ant different than a young boys? Up until 12 most girls teams can compete with boys and probably beat them if they are good. I'm pretty sure my daughter would tell you that having played against boys and witnessing it first hand at high youth levels

Because of testosterone boys become greater athletes at a certain age, which doesn't necessarily equate to a better soccer player (or Usain Bolt would pick up the game far quicker). To say Tobin Heath doesn't have more skill than a Arriolla of the USMNT would be incorrect. She is more skilled than him, better footskills, thinks better, positions better, has more creativity and vision. Yet, she doesn't have the explosion, strength or burst to play against a man at that level. If Usain Bolt out dribbled Heath or put a shoulder into her and knocked her off the ball would that make him a better soccer player?

This shouldn't be a comparison of man vs woman but more a comparison of maximizing individual potential. The USWMNT has done that and all women playing professionally have done that and should be a compensated accordingly to a comparison of what the viewer watches (USMNT VS WMNT), spends their money on, and feels is a worthy product.

Or you can be the ass to tell a 12 year old girl that you shouldn't play sports because you are not as a good as a boy. Yet they spend the same amount of hours perfecting a craft that seems equal in maximizing the genetic makeup given.

 

This isn't true. I wonder how far down the listing of men's tennis pros you would have to go before you could find one that wouldn't win the women's Grand Slam every year. But female tennis players are really big stars. The big attraction in the US at the winter Olympics is women's figure skating. Marion Jones had comparable star power to Carl Lewis.

To reiterate...there's a difference between the popularity of women in individual sports and women in team sports, but not in individual sports. To me, that means it is NOT because fans prefer bigger faster stronger. It's cultural. Cultures change.

That's going too far. Yes, some posters write that, and I agree with what you go on to write that that's a stupid position.

Some posters are basing the difference in pay to the difference in revenue.

Some posters are basing the difference in pay to the general fact of the signed contract with the players, and more specifically the elements in the contract that work to the benefit of the women.

Of course, these aren't mutually exclusive; I reject the first argument but accept both of the last two.

My point is that many of us aren't card carrying members of the He Man Women Haters Club.

 

I'd say that the attraction to womens athletes like figure skaters is because the female athlete is viewed to be the superior participant due to their mastery of the sport. A man can exhibit skill and power in that sport, but is lacking in the grace that typifies a high quality performance. The same can be said about gymnasts or ballerinas. Yes, that may be somewhat cultural, but there is a much larger biological aspect there. There are men who are great athletes in those sports, but who are the stars? Women.

 

I think this has been semi-tested, and Serena got smoked multiple times by #200-ish.

 

Serena and Venus, in the same day by then-203 Karsten Braasch, apparently, for the record.

 

You're ignoring tennis and track and field. Swimming too; Katie Ledecky (sp?) was a relative star there for a while before she retired.