-The US women's soccer team is good.
Like, really good.
They've won championships, awards, fans' hearts.
-Equal pay! Equal pay!
-Players on the US women's national soccer team -- -Filed
a federal complaint against the US Soccer Federation.
Players say their treatment
doesn't match their achievements,
and it's time to even the playing field.
-And since this year's Women's World Cup overlaps
with the presidential primary, politicians have weighed in.
In their legal response, the US Soccer Federation said
that these allegations are inaccurate and misleading.
So what's going on here?
The vast majority of revenue for the US Soccer Federation
comes from two places --
games played by both national teams and sponsorships.
Since fiscal 2016, ticket sales
for the women's games have not only matched,
but have brought in more overall revenue than the men's games.
And even though the games can be expensive to put on,
the women generated more net revenue for games in 2016
and 2017.
Sponsor have also been giving more since the US won
the 2015 Women's World Cup,
but we can't directly attribute that increase to either team
since the Federation doesn't distinguish
which team brings in more sponsorship
or how sponsorship dollars are allocated.
The players' earnings are determined by a mix of factors
that differ between the men's team and women's team,
making a direct comparison almost impossible.
The women's team makes a base salary and has bonuses.
The men's team only earns bonuses.
The teams play different numbers of games
and earn different bonuses
depending on the outcome of a game
and the rank of their opponent.
The lawsuit alleges that if both teams play 20 friendly games,
that a top-tier women's national player
would earn 38% of the compensation
of a similarly situated player on the men's team.
But that was under the previous collective
bargaining agreement that ended in December of 2016.
We obtained the new agreement,
which took effect in April of 2017,
and in the same scenario,
we calculated that a player on the women's team
would earn about 89% of the compensation
of a similarly situated men's player.
If both teams lost all 20 games,
the players would make the same amount,
because men earn a $5,000 bonus when they lose.
The women don't earn bonuses for losses,
but they have a $100,000 base salary.
But it's not just salaries and bonuses.
Players can also earn money a bunch of other ways.
In other words, how much money a player
makes depends on a lot of different factors.
-I think pay equity, a lot of times,
it just goes to compensation or salaries or bonuses.
But it's really hard to have that conversation
without really having the conversation about,
are the staffs funded equally?
Are the youth teams funded equally?
Branding, promotion, sponsorships.
-Until 2018, the men's team consistently had more expenses,
which included salaries, than the women's team.
But in 2018, the women earned more than the men on average.
But they also won more, and played almost double the games.
And that's all before we get to the World Cup pay structure,
which is set up entirely differently.
Total prize money for the Women's World Cup in 2019
is $30 million.
The champions will walk with about $4 million.
In 2018, the Men's World Cup champions won $38 million.
So there's no question that there's a huge gap
in earning potential here.
But it's important to understand how it works.
FIFA sets up the amount, and awards any prize money
to the winning country's Federation.
The Federation passes that onto the players.
The huge disparity in World Cup prize money
shows there's much less money in the women's game overall.
And even though, when it comes to revenue from ticket sales,
the women's team holds its own against the men,
US women's ability to make as much money
or more than the men's team
has traditionally required better consistent performance.
The new collective bargaining agreement
does a lot to shrink the gap in payment for friendly games,
but there is without question still a gap
when the World Cup is included.
-All of these things seem to be much better for men.
But that isn't necessarily the legal test.
The legal test will be,
do all of those things reflect gender discrimination?
And the argument will be that
it's not gender discrimination intentionally,
that it turns out to be discrimination
because of the marketplace.
So, you know, it's a case that could cause US Soccer
to have to raise some awkward arguments.