Stop Moaning about Pay
Posted by John Vrooman on Friday, July 10, 2015 in Major League Soccer.
I’m working on a story about the economics of women’s sports pegged to USA winning the Women’s World Cup and the kerfuffle over the pay gap. Many of the numbers that have been cited are indeed shocking. For instance, this from the Washington Post
But the financial rewards for women’s teams and their players at the end of the tourney revealed a more subtle gulf. The $2 million prize, though double the purse from the 2011 Women’s World Cup, is only one-quarter the $8 million that men’s teams earned from losing in the first round of last year’s World Cup.
It seems as though some of the nuance is getting lost in these figures and that the pay gap is being heavily politicized. I’d love to speak with you about the numbers and the economics of women’s sports in general— why we’re behind, how we’re catching up, etc.
Prize money aside, I do think that salaries are market-driven and the pay gap between women’s and men’s soccer (and in all women’s sports with the exception of tennis) isn’t some big, sexist conspiracy. It’s basic supply and demand.
So here’s are my questions: now that there does appear to be a growing market for U.S. women’s soccer, can we expect bigger/better remunerations for the players in the future? More advertisers and marketing deals for the next Women’s World Cup? More sponsorships for the tournament’s star players like Abby Wambach?
You are probably correct that the gender pay gap in professional soccer is more the result of basic monopoly capitalism than overt sexism.
The soccer (football) players labor markets are unique compared to other North American Sports leagues because they are wide open worldwide. As a result, the future of American professional soccer for both genders is subject to the adolescent growth spurts where the demand for soccer talent explodes in the wake of World Cup success only to wane over the following four years. Women’s soccer has come a long way even if it seems to proceed in fits and starts at the rate of continental drift.
The history of NA professional soccer has been the pro soccer league fantasy of capturing World Cup lightning in a bottle. This is true for the failures and successes of both men’s and women’s professional leagues over the last two decades.
After several failed franchises and leagues, it now seems as though the men’s MLS may have passed through the critical period since beginning in 1996 to form the critical mass of a self-sustaining real professional soccer league. The current women’s professional league is still in its formative stages in spite of the incredible adrenalin shots from the US women’s WC success.
The most likely catchup scenario for the third season NWSL is derived from the European model of common ownership of men’s and women’s football clubs, such as Olympique Lyonnais.
The appealing aspect of women’s soccer (besides US success on the world level) is that women seem play the beautiful game the way that it is supposed to be played.
The best example of this appeal is the rapid rise toward equality of the prize money Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) compared the men’s tour (ATP).
The medium for the US womens’ soccer message is the same as the WTA. It is made for TV on an international level. In the new age of streaming digital media, sports rights fees are exploding for all sports including soccer worldwide.
The basic economics of derived demand from cable sports networks (FOX, NBC and ESPN) strongly suggests that the spreading media rights explosion will drive the American revolution toward equal pay for women footballers worldwide.
Was hoping to reconnect with you for a piece I’m working on right now about equal prize money in tennis, and whether men deserve to be paid more than women.
The story is pegged to Djokovic responding to indelicate comments made by Indian Wells Tennis Garden CEO Raymond Moore about the WTA riding “on the coattails of men.” Djokovic then argued, more articulately, that men should be paid more than women because stats show they have more spectators and play more games.
Looking at TV and digital ratings in recent years — both in U.S. and abroad — he seems to be right. When you consider that men also spend more time on court, again his argument seems to hold up.
I wanted to check these figures with a sports economist and so am reaching out to you again, since you were tremendously helpful the last time I wrote a similar story. Women are catching up (nowhere more than in tennis) but shouldn’t the prize money be relative and based on who draws a bigger audience? Is Djokovic right that men’s tennis continues still draws more spectators than women’s tennis?
The major problem with professional tennis is that the fan base is widespread but not very deep. Both men and women professional tennis players suffer an extremely unbalanced income distribution where the bottom 99 percent average less than $20,000 earnings per year.
Men and women now receive equal prize money in all four Grand Slams, but the battle between the sexes for a shallow pool of prize money at the top seems somewhat petty when compared to the gross earnings disparity from top to bottom of both the WTA and ATP.
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