Core of U.S. women’s soccer team lawsuit over equal pay should be only about revenue
As evidenced even in our current state of CoronaCrazy, the U.S. Women’s National soccer team is a traveling circus so successful that the masses arrived on Wednesday night despite the advice from medical professionals.
While games are being canceled all over the world faster than you can say, “But I bought tickets for that,” the women extended their collective middle finger at the CoronaVirus and played on.
The USWNT played Japan in the SheBelieves Cup Finals on Wednesday night in Frisco to a capacity crowd of a “fearless” 20,000. Fearless, or they all had stockpiles of hand sanitizer, and toilet paper.
(Can someone explain to me the need to load up on toilet paper?)
With all due respect to BTS and TayTay, there is no more popular traveling band these days in the U.S. than the USWNT, and all of their players are sick of the double standard.
Despite their international success, the players who comprise the U.S. Women’s National Team remain in a nasty fight and lawsuit with U.S. Soccer over the size of their check.
Men’s national team players make more money than the women, hence the root of this gender-discrimination lawsuit that includes a demand for back pay in the tens of millions.
Here is the easy answer: If the USWNT generates as much revenue as the USMNT, done and done. That’s it. This isn’t some Title IX charity case that is an effort to nobly advance a gender through equal opportunity.
According to US Soccer, between April 2018 and March 2019 the men’s team generated $16.3 million while the women’s team made $12 million.
U.S. soccer is essentially professional sports. Once you turn pro, the priority is money.
A USWNT player can make a maximum of $260,000. The men can make more than $1.1 million.
That’s worth suing over. The difference in performance bonuses between the two teams is in the hundreds of thousands.
On the surface, the USWNT is generating money. Tickets for Wednesday’s match were going on the secondary market for $400.
The USWNT brand is far superior to the USMNT.
The USWNT is comprised of names such as Rapinoe, Morgan, Ertz and Lloyd who have created something never done before.
What the USWNT has done is to create an established team of women, rather than just a single tennis player, golfer or Olympic gymnast.
They win World Cups, and Olympic gold medals.
The USMNT has one player who is as popular as his female counterpart, Christian Pulisic. Euro stars are bigger in the U.S. than American names.
The USMNT struggles to qualify for World Cups, and celebrate a third-place finish in international events.
Yes, all of this has to do with the level of competition. The respective fields don’t compare.
The USWNT is the standard of a sport that is in its infancy internationally.
The USMNT competes against established nations in a sport that is the priority in every continent but North America.
“There is an evolution of good teams in the women’s game. So much of it is how much money you are spending,” former USWNT player Julie Foudy said in an interview before the match. “How much you are investing in girls, not so much in a money sense but in an opportunity sense for girls to play. In a lot of these countries, they are still struggling that this is a men’s sport and [women] aren’t allowed to play.
“We are seeing that change. Look at Spain. We never played Spain because they never won. Now you see what has happened when they opened up the culture to women playing. You are seeing that in England. All over Europe. There is progress there because they’re realizing there is a market for it and there is money there.”
Watching people line up 10 to 15 deep at the merchandise windows, there is money being made on the USWNT.
Part of this lawsuit is over a contract that its union constructed years ago, before they all realized how much money they were leaving on the table.
And the other part is an argument that has no place in this discussion.
According to a court filing submitted on Monday, lawyers for US Soccer said, “Plaintiffs are not entitled to summary judgment on their [Equal Pay Act] claims because a reasonable juror could conclude that the job of MNT player requires materially different skill and more responsibility than Plaintiffs’ job does, while also taking place under materially different working conditions.
“Simply put, they are materially different jobs that cannot be compared under the EPA.”
Simply put, offensive and stupid.
The men and women both play soccer, but it’s a different game. The size and speed is different, but skill is skill.
Quit comparing the men’s game to the women’s game. In any sport. They are different games, from golf to soccer to basketball to tennis. That is no one’s fault.
