Women's soccer team making history in more ways than one

I went out to dinner last week with a friend who had a hot take on the U.S. women’s soccer team’s recent World Cup win that was simultaneously hilarious and sad. After ordering our food, she looked up from her Bloody Mary and said, “It’s interesting that a country that doesn’t seem to care about women’s sports or soccer is so good at both.”

While she was joking — I think — she makes a good point. Soccer overall has seen a decline in participation among American fans in recent years, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association, and women’s sports have historically struggled to reach the level of popularity that men’s sports enjoy.

In March, after years of complaint about the pay gap between male and female athletes, 28 members of the U.S. women’s soccer team filed a class action against the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) alleging the organization pays female players less than members of the U.S. men’s team, violating the U.S. Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The federation denies the claim, stating that any pay differences can be attributed to “aggregate revenue generated by the different teams and/or any other factor other than sex.”

It’s difficult to break down the revenues used to justify pay structure, but according to audited financial statements from the USSF obtained by The Wall Street Journal, women’s games are generating higher gate revenues than men’s. According to the audit, women’s games generated $1.9 million more in revenue than men’s games in 2016, and from 2016 to 2018, women’s games generated about $50.8 million in revenue, more than the $49.9 million for men’s.

It’s true that those numbers don’t include one of the huge operating incomes for the USSF — sponsorships. And the pay structure is further muddled by players’ individual bargaining agreements. But the claim that fans just won’t support women’s sports with their pocketbooks, necessitating a pay gap, is falling apart.

In fact, immediately after the U.S. win, fans at the World Cup stadium began shouting “Equal pay!”

The women’s team just snagged its fourth World Cup title and holds four Olympic titles, while the men’s team didn’t even qualify for last year’s World Cup tournament. That makes some of the comparisons in the lawsuit even more puzzling.

According to the lawsuit, if the women’s and men’s teams each played 20 non-tournament games in a year and each team won them all, women would earn a maximum of $99,000, or $4,950 per game. Meanwhile, a male player would get an average of $263,320, or $13,166 per game under their respective contract formulas.

That means that some of the foremost elite athletes in the world would be making about 38 percent what their underperforming counterparts make, simply due to gender.

According to the lawsuit, the Women’s National Team Player’s Association (WNTPA) proposed a revenue-sharing model to “test the USSF’s ‘market realities’ theory” that would link player compensation to revenue generated by the women’s national team for USSF. In a statement, the U.S. men’s soccer team endorsed the suggested revenue-sharing model.

The team’s crusade has drawn the comments from world leaders and sparked debate in fans’ homes and online, and whether or not a judge decides the suit has merit, one thing’s for sure: we’re damn good at women’s soccer.

Shannen Talbot can be reached at [email protected].