This has been brewing for awhile. I had a conversation after the last World Cup cycle with my sister; Her argument was, justifiably, that equal work deserves equal pay, and in this case the women outperform the men in their own competitive field. The obvious hole in all of this was that spectator sports are entertainment, and entertainers make money based on how much revenue they rake in. It's true that during the last world cup year (2015 for women) the USWNT did bring in more in terms of revenue, but overall the men's sport does (or did) (just like NBA players make more than WNBA players, and so on).I believe that both of these arguments have merit, however, at this point, even if that's still true (I'm not digging into revenue stats right now, and it doesn't really matter) my attitude now is just "F*ck it, make the pay scales the same, even if that means siphoning revenue from the men's side to do it" Be a model for the rest of the world. Title 9 is, in part, what allowed the women's sport to become so strong in the US, and what allowed us to have a leg up. We decided that no matter what the system/or paying audiences preferred, we were going give women the same shot as men in terms of college athletic scholarships. What we ended up with was 3 World Cups in 25 years. If we want to keep that dominance, adopt matching pay scales. This will encourage young US women to play the game professionally and it'll strengthen our programs and shore up our player pool. It'll be tricky, and it'll probably involve letting CBA agreements lapse and writing up new ones, but ultimately we can make it happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment