Playing the Game for Equal Pay



In honor of International Women's Day, I wanted to share an economic story based on the United States Women's National Soccer Team.
The Women's National Soccer Team is currently suing US Soccer for unequal pay, in comparison to the men's national team.

How much are the Women's team making (salary) compared to the Men?

While the star female and male players are paid almost equally (the top paid woman makes $1.2 million and the top paid man makes $1.4) the salaries start to vary drastically for the more "average" national team players. Female players are not paid if they lose or even tie a game, while men are.
HOWEVER, it is important to address the other side. In 2011, the Women's World Cup brought in  ~$73 million, while the 2010 Men's World Cup made ~$4 billion. When comparing the percentage of revenue, the men's team only received 9 percent of the total revenue and the women's team received 13 percent. The article this information is from was published in 2015. As seen by the graph, the revenues drastically changed between 2015 and 2016.

Well, is the men's team winning more games? 

In 2015, the women’s team won the World Cup and, according to the New York Times, brought in "more than $23 million in game revenue, about $16 million more than the federation had projected". The Women's team is expected to win gold at the next Olympics, and sell tickets for another lucrative victory tour. The future outlook for the Women's team continues to rocket upwards;  US Soccer predicts the Women's team will turn a profit of at least $5 million next year.

Well, does the men's team draw in more views or tickets?

After winning the World Cup, the Women's team played games in 10 different cities, adding more than $10,000,000 to U.S. Soccer’s revenue. These gains resulted in the women alone giving US Soccer a profit of $6.6 million in 2015, compared to the men's measly profit of $2 million. The men's team will lose about $1 million this year.


Hasan Minhaj sums up the situation best in this video from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.


Sports teams cost a lot of money, but the revenue they bring in from advertisers and fans is massive. Do you think that the women's team should be paid the same, or should salaries be independent of one another, paid solely based on the advertisers and revenue they bring in? The latter may result in the men's team continuing to be paid more if they make more revenue, but it also opens the possibility of the women being paid more.

Sources
https://www.nbcsports.com/northwest/world-cup/equal-pay-womens-world-cup-players-seriously
https://www.npr.org/2019/03/08/701522635/u-s-womens-soccer-team-sues-u-s-soccer-for-gender-discrimination
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/sports/womens-soccer-team-lawsuit-gender-discrimination.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/sports/soccer/usmnt-uswnt-soccer-equal-pay.html

Comments

  1. KevinMarch 10, 2019 at 2:13 PM

    Really interesting post! I like how you addressed not only the issue of equal pay, but also the topic of how much revenue the women's/men's soccer teams are bringing in. However, I think the women's and men's team should be equally paid. It is unfair how even though the women's team is making more progress in major tournaments than the men's, they are still paid less and not treated the same. In the 2014 World cup, women performed much better, but they were still paid four times less than the men. In terms of bonuses, if the men's team were to win the World Cup, the team would make around 9.3 million while the women's team would only get 1.8 million. This huge gap demonstrates that there is still lots of work to be done to achieve equal pay in US soccer.
    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/data-how-does-the-u-s-womens-soccer-team-pay-compare-to-the-men

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMarch 14, 2019 at 11:37 AM

    In common sense for the business advertisement, companies naturally would choose to sponsor men's sports in general because they have more viewers, so this means more possible revenue could be drawn from its advertisement. However, after reading this post, I was surprised by the number that women's soccer team makes for profits is much higher than the men's team. I support the equal pay not only because I am a female and I would like to see an equal field regardless of players' gender, but also because from the pure number, women's team made more profits than men's team. Women should be paid equally or maybe paid more based on the profit number.

    ReplyDelete

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