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July 14, 2015[Ed’s Note: This piece comes to WFNY from guest contributor Steve Keeney]
On July 5, a record number of Americans tuned in to watch the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) beat Japan 5-2, earning the United States its record third FIFA Women’s World Cup title. For taking home the trophy, the USWNT earned $2 million for the US Soccer Federation. Since then, many news outlets have posted stories about the difference between prize money for the Men’s and Women’s World Cups.
The 2014 men’s winner, Germany, earned $35 million in prize money. The total pot of prize money was $358 million — some outlets report the figure as $576 million, but that total includes payments made to club teams, participation fees, and insurance money. The USWNT earned $2 million of the $9.6 million total prize money at the 2015 Women’s Cup.
So yes, the women’s prize money pool is only 2.7 percent of the men’s pool. And yes, the women’s champion gets 5.7 percent of what the men’s champion does. And yes, the women’s champion in fact gets 25 percent of what the last place men’s team gets. But these are not the numbers fans should be focusing on. The culture of sexism at FIFA is far more important than any dollar amount could be. The women were forced to play on field turf rather than grass at this year’s World Cup. Long-time FIFA President Sepp Blatter once suggested the women wear tighter shorts to increase interest, and doesn’t even recognize the world’s top female players — and Blatter once called himself the “godfather of women’s football.” Even the official FIFA website published an article noting US star Alex Morgan’s looks.
Clearly, the most important issues facing women’s soccer at FIFA are cultural. But there are also several financial issues which deserve more attention than the prize money gap. In fact, the women probably come out better than the men when comparing prize money to revenue. The Men’s teams get $358 million in prizes out of $4 billion in revenue, or 8.9 percent. While official numbers aren’t out yet, the women’s teams get $9.6 million out of an estimated $49.8 million in revenue. This estimate comes from assuming the Men’s and Women’s Cups get the same percent of revenues from advertising revenues ($1.4 billion out of $4 billion for the men), and that the overall revenues for the 2015 Women’s World Cup tripled compared to the 2011 Cup the way the ad revenues did.
[Related: WFNY Podcast — USWNT Wins the World Cup]
The real financial fights for the women’s game are 1) that FIFA spends far more money on developing the men’s game than the women’s game, 2) that the top-heavy prize payouts for the Women’s World Cups may exacerbate the international game’s talent gap, and 3) that the women’s teams get just over one-eighth of what the men’s teams do to cover the costs of participating in the Cup.
Part of the revenue difference in the Men’s and Women’s Cups is simply that you have to spend money to make money. In 2013, FIFA budgeted $2.15 billion to expenses relating to the 2014 Men’s World Cup in Brazil. They budgeted just $60 million to expenses relating to the 2015 Women’s World Cup (2.8 percent of the Men’s Cup’s budget). FIFA budgeted almost the same amount ($58 million) for the 2017 Confederations Cup, an eight-team men’s tournament held the year before each Men’s Cup as a practice run for tournament organizers. So FIFA spends about the same amount on an eight-team men’s practice tournament as they do on the 24-team women’s showpiece. FIFA also spends $120 million (twice what it does on the Women’s World Cup) on its Club Protection Program to pay club teams if male players are injured during a FIFA competition. But don’t worry — FIFA auditors are out there making sure that federations spend at least 15 percent of their costs on women’s soccer.
As well as being underfunded, the Women’s Cups are also less competitive than the Men’s. From 1986 to 2010, 65 percent of the matches at the group stages of the Men’s Cups were decided by one goal or less. From 1991-2015, only 48.2 percent of group stage matches at the Women’s Cups were decided by one goal or less. One third of all Women’s Cup group stage matches have a goal difference of 3 or more. Except for Germany 2011, every Women’s Cup has had at least one match with a goal differential of six or more. In Canada 2015, Germany won its opening match against Ivory Coast 10-0. And while the percentage of games decided by a goal or less has increased recently, the prize payouts threaten to widen the gaps between the top and the mediocre teams. The champion and runner-up in Canada earned a combined $3.4 million out the total $9.6 million in prize money: 35.4 percent of the pot. Compare that to $60 million of the $358 million prize money pot — 16.8 percent — for the men in Brazil. Giving a high percentage of the prize money to teams that are already the best could exacerbate the Women’s Cup’s competitiveness problems.
Perhaps the most outrageous discrepancy is the participation fee World Cup teams get. At Brazil 2014, each men’s team got $1.5 million just to participate. This fee is, theoretically, a combination prize for qualifying for the tournament and money to help cover the logistical and salary expenses the national federations pay for teams to travel to and to play in the tournament. At Canada 2015, each women’s team got just $200,000, or 13.3 percent of what the Men got. The total prize money gap can be explained by revenue discrepancies — but for an organization with billions in the bank, paying men’s and women’s teams different amounts to do the some amount of training and traveling is ridiculous. And even though the men’s tournament is bigger, in the 2015 Women’s Cup each team played the same three group stage matches as the men do, and after the group stage remaining teams played in a Round of 16, a Quarterfinal, a Semifinal, and a Final, just like the men’s teams. To pay the teams different amounts of money to do the same work is the definition of discrimination.
So, while the prize money issue is the popular, easy issue to talk about and find numbers on, it really is not the right place to start talking about equal treatment for women’s soccer. First FIFA has to change its culture from one that objectifies female soccer players. Then it can start treating the women’s game equally by putting in the money and effort that the game deserves. Then we can talk about how much prize money teams should get. Women’s soccer in the world has a long way to go to get equal treatment, and we cannot help that process along by looking only at the easy issues.
4 Comments
Love soccer. That said, most of the FIFA expenses are probably kickbacks to themselves and their officers. Of the 2.15 bn allocated for “expenses” probably 3/4s of it was enriching themselves and friends from the FIFA coffers.
On the other hand, men’s soccer is more fun to watch because men are better at soccer. Or is that too
outrageous a thought to consider here?
Speaking of ‘outrageous discrepancies’ … almost 1 billion people watched the men’s final last year compared to 63 million that watched the women’s final this year. The largest viewership of any event in the history of mankind. Thus, the men’s world cup generated $5 billion in revenues for FIFA while the women’s world cup generated less than $100 million in revenues.
Do we even need to cite data on percentages of male versus women viewers in the two events and the relative beer purchasing of the two groups which the single largest determinant in the ad revenue that sets the broadcast rights fees? I mean, I’m already struggling with the farce of debating this premise.
When there is comparable interest in the women’s game, women are paid comparably — Wimbledon prize money is the same for men and women.
I truly hope we are nearing a point in our culture where rote ideological axioms such as the central premise of ‘gender bias’ put forward in this piece are not only challenged but dismissed for the nonsense that they in fact are.
“Outrageous discrepancies.” Christ.
Wow. I feel like you completely restated the point of the article while utterly missing it at the same time. I didn’t know that was possible.
Agree with that assessment. If you think about women’s basketball, in the US players barely make 6 figures due to it’s low popularity here. In Europe where it’s much more popular, players routinely make 7 figures. Men’s soccer is 10 times bigger than women’s it’s unrealistic to expect them to be paid at the same rate as women.