When I read this title – “Champion Female Soccer Players Make Far Less Money Than Male Players” – I get the feeling that they’re implying that this is a problem. Perhaps if the word “far” wasn’t used, I would think they were just pointing out the facts.
Here’s the Yahoo Report.
Let’s look at some numbers:
2015 Women’s World Cup Viewers in America – 25 million
2014 USA Men’s Elimination Game vs Portugal in America – 17.3 million
2015 Global Audience of Champions League Men’s Final Barcelona vs Juventus – 180 million
2010 Men’s World Cup Final Spain vs Netherlands – 909 million
Average salary of soccer player in the USA:
MLS – $305,000 (which is quite high in my opinion)
NWSL- $14,000
World cup prize money:
Men’s FIFA World Cup – $576 million
Women’s – $15 million
US Men’s team made $9 million in prize money for being eliminated in the round of 16 vs $2 million for the women who won the championship.
So What?
Blatter and Morgan in 2012
When FIFA writes stories focusing on Alex Morgan’s looks and Sepp Blatter, the head of FIFA, not even knowing who Alex Morgan is as she was being honored as one of the 3 top players in the league, it’s fairly obvious the Women’s league isn’t generating much respect in FIFA.
Another major consideration is ticket sales, jersey sales, and general excitement surrounding an event that reaches almost a billion people vs (an estimate of ) 100 million people. So is the breakdown of money fair? No.
If a game is generating 25 million viewers solely in the US, the USA team deserves more than 2 million in prize money from FIFA and a shit ton more from Fox. They’ll be plenty of endorsement deals for the women but I can be certain that Fox is making out like a bandid here. It should be noted that the 1999 (13.3 rating) team drew a bit less ratings to the 2015 team (15.2 rating).
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