Total Loss of Interest in Women's World Cup

Payton said:

Actually, according to US Soccer Fed, the USWNT generates more revenue than the men at present. I'm sure if the men had beaten fuckin Trinidad and Tobago and qualified for the World Cup that would have been different....

....but they didn't.

Sure, worldwide men's soccer dwarfs Women's soccer in revenue, but the pertinent discussion is revenue generated for the US Soccer Federation by the US teams...

Click to expand...

The USWNT might be generating more right now because they are in a World Cup year. In no way would they generate more than the men’s team in any other year for the USSF.

ralphiewvu said:

The USWNT might be generating more right now because they are in a World Cup year. In no way would they generate more than the men’s team in any other year for the USSF.

Click to expand...

Apparently since 2015 they have...

Honestly, I think it is unrealistic for them to expect equal pay, though we seem to have no issue pissing away money on more pointless things... US Soccer needs to do some work to make things more equitable though... Some of the fields they have them play on are appalling (For instance)...

Again, it does need to be made clear to the women and taken into account that the Women's Professional league in the US is heavily subsidized (if not entirely paid for)... They cant support themselves... So in some respects these ladies need to be careful in how hard they push here..

Payton said:

Apparently since 2015 they have...

Honestly, I think it is unrealistic for them to expect equal pay, though we seem to have no issue pissing away money on more pointless things... US Soccer needs to do some work to make things more equitable though... Some of the fields they have them play on are appalling (For instance)...

Again, it does need to be made clear to the women and taken into account that the Women's Professional league in the US is heavily subsidized (if not entirely paid for)... They cant support themselves... So in some respects these ladies need to be careful in how hard they push here..

Click to expand...

Link?

ralphiewvu said:

Link?

Click to expand...

On my phone at the moment, but was a Yahoo article IIRC... I'll find it.

Payton said:

On my phone at the moment, but was a Yahoo article IIRC... I'll find it.

Click to expand...

All good, I look forward to reading it. It’s just so hard to believe the USWNT brings in more than th men in any year except a World Cup year.

blazer prophet said:

Now that a second payer has come out and states she has no respect for the office of the Presidency of the country that pays her and allows her to play, I went from very high interest to none at all. And I'm not a republican, I am an American.

I've just had it with spoiled brat athletes who have no respect at all for anything but themselves.

Won't even check the scores.

Click to expand...

PLONK until you figure out where to post your bullshit.

Only soccer worth watching is Womans US national team. And I've watched Barcelona play ManU a few years back, live. Men's soccer is filled with over paid, lazy, fake injury, ass hats. I really hope video playback removes the fake falling over crap out of soccer. It really annoys me.

Don't really care for Women's soccer. I lost respect for it when a woman disrespected our flag while representing her country...

Rapinoe is a disgrace.

Names are different but de ja vu.

ralphiewvu said:

All good, I look forward to reading it. It’s just so hard to believe the USWNT brings in more than th men in any year except a World Cup year.

Click to expand...

He didn't link it, but I have heard several commentators mention this fact on air including Foudy. Of course they are talking in the USA. The greatness of the Womans Team and the atrocious showing by the Mens Teams over the last decade probably has a lot to do with it.

NCChiFan said:

He didn't link it, but I have heard several commentators mention this fact on air including Foudy. Of course they are talking in the USA. The greatness of the Womans Team and the atrocious showing by the Mens Teams over the last decade probably has a lot to do with it.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I’ll wait for a link. I still find it very hard to believe.

Only queers watch soccer.

ralphiewvu said:

Yeah, I’ll wait for a link. I still find it very hard to believe.

Click to expand...

Pay Disparity in U.S. Soccer? It’s Complicated

This is a pretty fair assessment of the issues.

NCChiFan said:

Pay Disparity in U.S. Soccer? It’s Complicated

This is a pretty fair assessment of the issues.

Click to expand...

Can’t read it. Can you copy and paste, it says I went past my amount I could view.

ralphiewvu said:

Can’t read it. Can you copy and paste, it says I went past my amount I could view.

Click to expand...

Copied the best I could, the format they used is kind of funky.And I have to break it into several posts because it's over 12,000 characters.
Pay Disparity in U.S. Soccer? It’s Complicated

CreditIllustration by Sam Manchester/The New York Times

Image
CreditCreditIllustration by Sam Manchester/The New York Times


By Andrew Das

• April 21, 2016 The United States women’s national team sued U.S. Soccer for gender discrimination in federal court on Friday. Among their complaints is that members of the team are still paid less than members of the men’s national team even though both do the same work under the same working conditions and expectations. This primer, from 2016, explains in broad terms (and using numbers from that time) the differing pay structures under which the teams are paid by U.S. Soccer.

The core fact is not in dispute: The players on the World Cup-winning United States women’s national soccer team earn less money than their counterparts on the men’s national team. After that truth, things are muddier. How much less? How can that be fair? And most important: What is being done about it?

U.S. Soccer and the union representing the players on the women’s team have traded court filings and accusations — in a lawsuit filed by U.S. Soccer over the validity of the team’s collective bargaining agreement and in a wage-discrimination complaint filed by five top players last month. Amid all of this, we gave both sides the opportunity to make their case using U.S. Soccer’s public (and private) financial data. What we found suggests a complicated battlefield.

Who Is Saying What?
In a wage-discrimination complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in March, five top players on the women’s team accused U.S. Soccer of paying them and their teammates about a quarter of what their counterparts on the men’s national team receive. Wielding the federation’s own financial reports as evidence, the women excoriated a compensation and bonus structure that they said tilted heavily in favor of the men and pointed out that their team’s on-field success had produced millions of dollars in revenue for U.S. Soccer in 2015 and was projected to do the same this year.

Doesn’t the Men’s Team Bring in More Revenue?
In most years? Yes. Over the long term, the more established men’s game brings in consistently higher game revenue year over year. (Sponsorships and television revenue are not counted in game revenue calculations; Nike, Fox Sports and ESPN, for example, are “buying the crest,” in U.S. Soccer vernacular, not the rights to a single team.)

Part 2 of Pay Disparity.

--------------
But in 2015, the women’s team won the World Cup and then embarked on a scheduled 10-city victory tour that yielded an eight-figure bump to U.S. Soccer’s bottom line.


As a result, the women brought in more than $23 million in game revenue, about $16 million more than the federation had projected. An anomaly? Yes. And a welcome one if you are U.S. Soccer.


After expenses, the women turned a profit of $6.6 million last year. The men? Their profit was just under $2 million. Looking ahead, U.S. Soccer’s 2017 budget predicts that trend will be repeated: Expecting another Olympic gold medal, and another victory tour, the federation has forecast a profit of more than $5 million for the women’s team in the next fiscal year (on $17.5 million in revenue).

The men? U.S. Soccer figures they will lose about $1 million this year (on only $9 million in revenue).


The Women Make a Quarter as Much? Really?

Yes and no. According to figures provided by U.S. Soccer, since 2008 it has paid 12 players at least $1 million. Six of those players were men, and six were women. And the women hold their own near the top of the pay scale; the best-paid woman made about $1.2 million from 2008 to 2015, while the top man made $1.4 million in the same period. Some women in the top 10 even made more than their male counterparts over those years. But the numbers diverge down the list. At No. 25, the female player made just under $341,000, and the corresponding male player supplemented his salary by about $580,000. At No. 50, the male player made 10 times as much as his female counterpart.

Part of that is structural; a bigger player pool, a more fluid roster and higher game bonuses have given more men a chance to take money out of U.S. Soccer’s cash drawer. But there is also another important distinction about the women’s pay, said Rich Nichols, the general counsel for the United States Women’s National Soccer Team Players Association. “Seventy-five percent of that compensation, both last year and over those eight years, is directly related to winning championships,” he said. In other words, Nichols said, the women have to perform at a world-beating level just to keep pace financially. And that victory tour money? The women had to play the extra games to get it. “The men,” Nichols said, “get paid just for showing up.” What he and his players want, they say, is equal pay for equal work.


But Is It Equal Work?

Not exactly. To qualify for the Women’s World Cup, for example, the United States women’s team plays five games in a single two-week tournament.


The men’s qualifying road is a two-year, 16-game slog across North and Central America and the Caribbean. U.S. Soccer argues that the roster bonuses for successful qualification — $15,000 for the women in 2015, $55,000 for the men in 2014 — reflect that.

Equal Work?



In three of the past four years, and again through the first few months of 2016, the women’s national team has played more games — sometimes 40 and 50 percent more — than the men’s national team. The women also have twice as many victories, 88 wins to the men’s 44.

MEN

Total games: 76 Record: 44-18-14

WOMEN

Total games: 110 Record: 88-6-16


And while U.S. Soccer also counts the women’s biweekly salaries (compensation that the male players do not receive) as a mitigating factor in its favor in the pay-equity dispute, the women play more games on a year-to-year basis and must win them to claim their bonuses, effectively requiring them to work harder and perform better just to keep pace.


How Are the Players Paid?

The pay plans differ for the men’s and women’s national teams, who have their own players’ associations and negotiate their own collective bargaining agreements. The women’s team’s pay is a mix of a base salary — $72,000 for the majority of players on the regular roster — plus a modest game bonus ($1,350) for each game won. (The women do not receive game bonuses if they tie or lose matches.) U.S. Soccer also pays the salaries of the national team players who compete in the N.W.S.L., the nascent American women’s professional league, as well as providing some health insurance benefits, severance pay for players cut from the team and maternity leave at half pay if they become pregnant.


The men, meanwhile, operate on a pay-for-play system: Those players who are called in for matches are eligible for roster and game bonuses considerably higher than those paid to the women, but a player must be called into camp to receive anything. So when Tim Howard took a year off after the 2014 World Cup, he earned no pay from U.S. Soccer for the games he missed. Any player who is injured, or one who is on the fringes of the national team player pool and is not called in for months or years, receives nothing until he returns to camp. The security net is that every male player in the pool, unlike the women, has the advantage of falling back on a lucrative salary from his professional club.

Pay Disparity Part 3


Why Is This Coming Up Now?

It is important to view the dispute between U.S. Soccer and the women’s national team in a larger context. In the wake of its Women’s World Cup triumph, the popularity and profitability of the team are at record levels. At the same time, the women’s national team players’ association is in the middle of negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer — one that is likely to determine the players’ pay and working conditions through the next World Cup or two. (The battle over artificial turflurks right behind the pay fight.) The players contend that their big year in 2015 is a sign of a bright future and that their visibility and on-field success have made them the driving economic force of U.S. Soccer. The federation counters, using figures like those in the charts above, that the women have received comparable pay and that men’s team still consistently produces a larger share of U.S. Soccer’s revenue year to year.

artificial turflurks right behind the pay fight.) The players contend that their big year in 2015 is a sign of a bright future and that their visibility and on-field success have made them the driving economic force of U.S. Soccer. The federation counters, using figures like those in the charts above, that the women have received comparable pay and that men’s team still consistently produces a larger share of U.S. Soccer’s revenue year to year.


Should Revenue Matter When It Comes to Pay?

Sunil Gulati, U.S. Soccer’s president and a lecturer in economics at Columbia University, contends that revenue has to be a big part of any discussion about compensation. “A lot of different things go into the compensation for the women’s players,” he said last month, citing revenue and performance as the most prominent examples. “We want to compensate them fairly.” Gulati also said that television ratings were another factor; while the women’s team broke viewing records during the Women’s World Cup, ratings for men’s games have been more than double those for women’s games, on average, since 2012, according to Nielsen calculations. Excluding World Cup games, the men’s team’s ratings are almost four times as high.


The new FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, seems to agree with Gulati’s point of view. He told Sports Illustrated last week that “the prize money today is linked with the revenues that are generated.” But Infantino has also expressed a desire to create a new women’s division in FIFA, focused solely on promoting women’s soccer globally. And everyone can agree that FIFA’s putting its shoulder behind improving opportunity and compensation in women’s soccer, which remains an afterthought — or nonexistent — in many countries, would be a huge step forward.

What About Those Per Diems and Sponsor Payments?

The ones in which U.S. Soccer pays the women $60 a day for expenses and the men $75? Or $3,000 for a sponsor appearance while the men receive $3,750? These are probably the most embarrassing numbers in the pay-equity debate for U.S. Soccer, because they are indefensible. (Carli Lloyd mocked them acidly in her recent New York Times essay, writing that “maybe they think women are smaller and thus eat less.”) In truth, those payments were equal before 2015, when an adjustment negotiated into the men’s C.B.A. increased them for the men. The problem was that there was no clause in the women’s C.B.A. that would ensure that the payments remained equal in the event that the men — whose C.B.A. comes up for renewal in different years — received a bump.

Can’t U.S. Soccer Address That?

It will, and possibly very soon: U.S. Soccer officials have had discussions in recent weeks about moving to make the per diem and appearance payments match immediately, even before a new C.B.A. is negotiated. There even has been talk of making up the difference going back to the date in 2015 when they diverged. “The per diems will be returned to the same amount as the men in the upcoming negotiating cycle,” Neil Buethe, a U.S. Soccer spokesman, said Tuesday, adding that the federation would “include language in future C.B.A.s to prevent this kind of discrepancy.”


What About Those Vastly Different World Cup Bonuses?

U.S. Soccer received $9 million when the men’s team advanced to the second round of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, but only about $2 million when the women won the 2015 World Cup in Canada. That is because FIFA pays out far more to participants in the men’s World Cup, a financial juggernaut, than it does to Women’s World Cup teams. Could U.S. Soccer choose to allocate that revenue differently, or to pool it to ensure that it was at least equal? Yes. But the men’s team would surely object.



How Much Less Are Female Soccer Players Paid?

Members of the United States women’s national soccer team includes several examples of wage discrimination in their complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

What’s Next?

The E.E.O.C. complaint will take a minimum of six months to investigate, according to labor experts familiar with the process, meaning that its resolution might not come until after a new collective bargaining agreement is in place. The sides continue to trade filings in U.S. Soccer’s suit over the validity of the current C.B.A. in federal court in Chicago. A decision is not expected until early June. If the court rules for the players, and throws out the C.B.A., they will have enormous leverage on the eve of the Olympics, including the ability to strike. If U.S. Soccer wins, there will be little to do but continue negotiations on a new agreement before the existing one expires on Dec. 31. In either case, the players will probably emerge with an improved deal — but only if serious discussions resume.

The sides, who last met face to face in March, agreed on Wednesday to sit down again — in mid-May.

ralphiewvu said:

Can’t read it. Can you copy and paste, it says I went past my amount I could view.

Click to expand...

Sorry dude, here is the article I was referencing. Forgot to provide the link I said I would...

Here are the strongest arguments the USWNT makes in its discrimination lawsuit

yahoosports said:

1) The USWNT brings in more revenue than the USMNT
The USWNT's case hinges on the argument that U.S. Soccer has paid the women less even though they bring in more money to the federation. This is important because the women's team being paid less than the men may not be enough alone to win a gender discrimination case – the women have to also prove there's no justifiable reason for the difference in compensation.

The lawsuit cites a very specific example in showing the profitability of the women's team. It states that in 2016, U.S. Soccer had initially budgeted a loss of $430,000 for the two senior national team programs but later revised that to a $17.7 million profit due to the USWNT's 2015 World Cup win and a surge in the team's popularity.

What the lawsuit doesn't get into is the fact that the trend of the women bringing in more revenue than the men continued after the 2015 World Cup. The financials from U.S. Soccer's own annual reports show more revenue from the USWNT than the USMNT in 2017 and 2018 as well.

No doubt, a big reason that trend has continued is that the USMNT missed out on last year's World Cup entirely. If the men had qualified, the financial picture would be very different. But the men didn't qualify.

Click to expand...

I mean, I really don't see how one can argue that the Women's team doesn't deserve at least CLOSER pay to what the men make based on this... Can't really use the, "Well.... IF the men HAD qualified for the WC in 2018...."... Well, they didn't and that is kind of the point here.

Payton said:

Sorry dude, here is the article I was referencing. Forgot to provide the link I said I would...

Here are the strongest arguments the USWNT makes in its discrimination lawsuit



I mean, I really don't see how one can argue that the Women's team doesn't deserve at least CLOSER pay to what the men make based on this... Can't really use the, "Well.... IF the men HAD qualified for the WC in 2018...."... Well, they didn't and that is kind of the point here.

Click to expand...

yeah, and it's different with every country/federation, but as for the USWNT, I for one have no issue with them being paid the same, or at least close to the same as the men's team, as they do generate a lot of revenue, probably more than any other women's team (and maybe a lot of men's teams). Even in years where the men do qualify for the WC, the women still generate a ton. Plus, they actually have won it several times.