Quote Originally Posted by cscollis View Post
I actually am with the ladies on this one except they should demand more than the crappy men's team. Per the media, the women made 20M last year and the men lost 2M. To pay the women's team less than the men's is understandable if the men's team was making more revenue with less expense.

I think the women are dumb only asking for equal pay when they should be able to demand more than the men based on profitability. This is not like title 9 where women's sports lose money.
I'm not saying you are necessarily wrong. And I'm not saying the women shouldn't make more money. I'll just add these thoughts for a little perspective.

The men are making millions to play for their club teams. They risk injury and deny themselves badly needed rest to play in these games. A couple of years ago an up and coming Centerback for the US was playing for AC Milan, at the time one of the top teams in the world. He jacked his knee up playing for the US and was never the same. This injury literally cost him millions of dollars. This also happened with a promising Center Mid, both saw their careers ruined. They should be and are compensated more for the time and the risk.

The women on the other hand that are lucky enough to be on a professional team, play in front of extremely sparse crowds, and hardly make any money. They risk nothing. The gain everything by playing for the National Team. Their careers are made during these games and tournaments. The men's careers are made by playing for their clubs.

The US is trying to pay market value for players, not basing the pay off of the womens team. The men want to be paid what other players of their ability are being paid. Our women on the other hand are paid far higher than their market value. They make more than women soccer players in any other country.

Also saying the mens team is crappy is pretty shortsighted. Being around the 20th best team out of like 250 teams isn't crappy. Especially when you consider the US is not even close to being a "Soccer Nation" (although it is slowly getting better) The mens side of Soccer is about 1 trillion times more competitive and difficult than the girls side.

Also TV ratings are massively higher for the men. The mens national team averages double the attendance of the womens national team for home games. And the revenue is predictably much higher for the men.

AND according to this quote from the ESPN article these numbers were from a time period where the womens team was playing more games. This goes in cycles:

It is important to put these numbers in context. The periods encompassing the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years will see the U.S. women's national team play two major tournaments, last summer's 2015 Women's World Cup, and the 2016 Olympic games. These years represent the peak revenue-producing periods for the women's team, and are expected to go down in the two years following the Olympics. But the women have made it clear that the revenue-producing power of the team has accelerated to the point that they should be paid on par with players on the men's national team.