Shame on US soccer. The ugly face of discrimination.

Amen Newbie

Hey InaB, I understand your point. My beef is the way these players are trying to co-opt a social justice message when all they're really trying to do is get a better CBA for themselves.

When NFL player's strike, they're not filing EEOC discrimination claims. They're trying to get a bigger slice of the pie from owners. They try to win the PR war with owners.  

If the players had just come out and said USSF is not FAIRLY paying us. We want fair pay. We want a better CBA. We want better treatment, and a bigger slice of the pie. Our iron is hot, so we're striking with it now.  NO PROBLEM with that! They didn't need to get on twitter and cnn and bash the men's team, nor claim gender discrimination, nor let their lawyer make up a misleading set of talking points to prop up their discrimination claims.

And I think the jury is definitely still out on whether their actions will benefit all female players.

And in no way are these players comparable to Serena Williams. No comparison at all.

newbiefornow wrote:Women's Tennis is the example I'd like Soccer to follow. The Tennis is great, the audience is big and the compensation reflects that. The whole debate about whether the best men can beat the best women is over and irrelevant. Sports were considered "un-lady like" a generation ago. It's going to take a generation to get past that BUT our kids will laugh at this. Women are becoming Sports Fans and they will want to watch people and teams they can identify with. The WMSL is getting investment because some folks have seen the demand for the Product and are investing in the creation of it.

Serena Williams is not being criticized for having an agent or for expecting big Prize money and she's not being told to hand it out to her sisters.. The voices tend to be a little more shrill when female Athletes stand up for themselves but the same gripping goes on when there's a Sports strike by the men. We don't own our Sports stars male or female. They have a unique talent that they work hard to maintain and cultivate. That goes for Baseball, Basketball and Soccer. Not to be too obvious but we pay to be entertained by that talent, how much is generally a function of how many of us go or tune in.

I think the negotiation is good. I don't blame US Soccer for wanting to keep as much money under their control as possible and  I don't blame US Women for standing up to US Soccer and saying we've earned more than you're offering. In this case I happen to be more on the side of the players.

The comparison to tennis is a bit of a reach, but you do make a very good point in your last paragraph. However, this is not how the WNT players went about their complaint. They didn't say, "we've earned more than you are offering", because there is no offer. Their compensation is already part of a CBA. If they would have come out and said, we should be earning more and we plan on negotiating a hard bargain in our next CBA, I don't think one person would argue against that. But they didn't...they came out and tried to make it political by getting behind an "Equal Pay for Equal Play" marketing scheme.

Like it or not, the play is not equal. What they are asking for is akin to WNBA players asking to be paid equally to NBA players or Women's EPL teams asking to be paid the same as their male counterparts in the EPL.

In my mind, these women deserve everything they can get their hands on. I truly hope they negotiate the best CBA ever seen in sports. However, I am very disappointed in the way they have gone about it. They have essentially picked a fight with their employer and it looks to me like the information coming out doesn't support any of their claims.

This isn't an accounting job where a male and female can provide the same service. This is sports and entertainment where multi-year, multi-million dollar contracts are negotiated based on past information. The prize funds for different tournaments are decided by a completely separate entity and the federations have no say in those prize funds.

If they would have simply stayed with items under their control with the CBA, I think they could achieve more. We want $1.50 per ticket at friendlies because that is what the men get...we want $75 per diem because that is what the men get...we want better hotel rooms because that is what them men get. They could ask for all these things and more in their next round of negotiations. Instead they have jeopardized many of the things they do get (salary for league play, health benefits, maternity leave, etc.) in order for the hard dollars to match up on paper.

This isn't exactly good press for USSF, but you can bet they are going to fight when being called out in public. The women would have had much more leverage had they kept "going public" with some of these items in the back pocket as part of the next CBA negotiation.

Something is worth what someone else is willing to pay. The revenue figures are a bit disingenuous as they don't take into account that the majority of the TV and AD revenue is generated as a result of the demand for Men's soccer.

So in short, the product is not the same and the demand for said product is not the same.

If somone else is willing to do the work for less and US soccer is satisfied with their result, and/or willing to settle for a lesser result so be it. I think in the end US Soccer wants to win at every level and I see this deal improving for the ladies. Still, let's not pretend this is equal-smequal stuff.

I'm not a lawyer, and I didn't sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but it looks to me like the primary reason the WNT went the EEOC route was to compel USSF to be more forthcoming about the revenue streams, in particular, how much of the TV Rights/Endorsement deals are being driven by the WNT.  It seems to me that is one area where they feel like they are getting particularly jobbed by USSF.

The secondary reason is to resolve the more obvious inequities that relate to per-diem, appearance fees, travel and accommodations, etc.  That stuff probably could have been resolved without the nuclear option of going to the EEOC, but it certainly doesn't hurt their case.

Again, it seems to me to be a shrewd ploy by their legal representation to get their hands on information that USSF would probably rather hide or keep nebulous going into the next CBA.

This isn't men or women. This is about a union trying to maximize the benefits for their members. Period. The USWNT has made it about gender and pay equality based on their PR campaign, but it's not. If the union reps for the USWNT didn't get as much as they should have when negotiating the last CBA, then that's their problem. Seems like the new reps are digging in and making plans for the new CBA to be a much better deal for their constituents. This has nothing to do with gender because if they'd made a better deal in the last CBA, we wouldn't be hearing about this at all.