Discussion about women's sports (split from the Olympics thread)

[pdxKingsFan]

I'm not happy that the US Women (soccer) were eliminated from medal contention but they did need to be smacked down to earth, so I'm grateful for that. And hopefully Hope Solo can go crawl under a rock.

I was really excited the following game when Australia almost bumped off Brazil but couldn't convert the clinching PK. I think I am rooting for Germany in this tournament.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I'm not happy that the US Women (soccer) were eliminated from medal contention but they did need to be smacked down to earth, so I'm grateful for that...

Wait, why did they need to be smacked down to earth?

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Wait, why did they need to be smacked down to earth?

I feel like in the wake of the World Cup win a lot of off field issues became a distraction. My opinion seems to be a minority opinion in my circles but I just feel like they should focus on the action on the pitch and renegotiate their contracts when they are up without feeding the public cherry picked data, ignoring/distorting economic realities and bad mouthing US Men's soccer in the process. I probably said too much.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

First of All™, I'm going to have to ask you to be specific about which "off the field issues" you are referring to. I am aware of some things happening off the field in women's soccer, but I need to make sure that what I've heard of is the same stuff that you're referring to, or if you're talking about something else, because it will inform any further responses.

Second of All, I'm going to beg to differ with you: I don't believe in momentum, within the context of sports, and I don't believe in distractions, so I am far from convinced that anything happening off the field has negatively affected the play on it. I'm not really here for all that purity-of-the-sport, shut-up-and-play business. I prefer for athletes to be outspoken, and I don't want them to be humble, and I don't want them to "stick to sports," as it were... As far as feeding the "public cherry picked data," I stipulate that, much like with women's basketball, the only time you hear about women's soccer in the news is when they're reporting on some scandal, or some other kind of **** ****, but the difference is I consider that to be a problem with the coverage, not the athletes. The athletes don't need to change, the way we talk about them does.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

First of All™, I'm going to have to ask you to be specific about which "off the field issues" you are referring to. I am aware of some things happening off the field in women's soccer, but I need to make sure that what I've heard of is the same stuff that you're referring to, or if you're talking about something else, because it will inform any further responses.

Second of All, I'm going to beg to differ with you: I don't believe in momentum, within the context of sports, and I don't believe in distractions, so I am far from convinced that anything happening off the field has negatively affected the play on it. I'm not really here for all that purity-of-the-sport, shut-up-and-play business. I prefer for athletes to be outspoken, and I don't want them to be humble, and I don't want them to "stick to sports," as it were... As far as feeding the "public cherry picked data," I stipulate that, much like with women's basketball, the only time you hear about women's soccer in the news is when they're reporting on some scandal, or some other kind of **** ****, but the difference is I consider that to be a problem with the coverage, not the athletes. The athletes don't need to change, the way we talk about them does.

Sorry, I went on vacation without internet access.

I am referring to taking their compensation complaints public with deliberately misleading info and insulting the US Men's team as a lesser team in the process. They do have some legitimate complaints but I do not support the way they went about it.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

But, what part of that was not true? Is the men's team not a lesser team, relatively speaking?

I think that there may be a disconnect between the two of us about the concept of not supporting the "way they went about" voicing legitimate complaints. I guess I feel like, if the complaints are indeed legitimate, then whatever methods they choose to voice those complaints are also legitimate, and if it makes the aggrievers uncomfortable, then that's just a bonus.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

But, what part of that was not true? Is the men's team not a lesser team, relatively speaking?

I think that there may be a disconnect between the two of us about the concept of not supporting the "way they went about" voicing legitimate complaints. I guess I feel like, if the complaints are indeed legitimate, then whatever methods they choose to voice those complaints are also legitimate, and if it makes the aggrievers uncomfortable, then that's just a bonus.

I don't think the bulk of the complaints were legitimate, and that is my problem.

Specifically they used revenue projections based solely on domestic ticket sales (and projections that notably included another victory tour after the olympics*) whereas the men make more money in TV and advertising revenue. The years included in the figures were women's world cup and olympic years whereas the men's team does not play in the olympics (the men's tournament is for under 23 teams) and the men's world cup year was not included. This is notable because in that year the USMNT made nearly 5 times the figure the women's team did for winning simply for advancing to the knockout round. Bottom line is men's soccer brings in bigger sponsors, more viewers and more money. That may not be fair but it is economic reality. And I don't really see fans lobbying to make ticket prices equal to pay these equal wages. A huge reason for the popularity here is it's accessibility.

It was also a sin of omission to ignore that when the women negotiated their CBA they specifically negotiated for a full time salary structure for the entire talent pool vs the men who only earn pay for games played. This has a definite impact on the pay of players outside of the top 10. But the difference in pay between star players and regulars is less dramatic, especially when the overall revenue is figured in. The USWNT even negotiated planned maternity leave where a men's player injured in a match will receive no further compensation.

As for the men's team, it is known that the USWNT was soundly beaten by the men's U-15 squad (so roughly high school JV level boys). I think they could fight for what they believe their worth without diminishing or denigrating the men's team who have made great strides of their own in international play over the last 3 decades.

* I just feel this fact alone was putting the cart before the horse and may completely change revenue forecasts and alter the entire argument. Which is a large reason for my initial post. They assumed they'd be leaving with golds and got bitten in the butt for it.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

That seems to come down to a lot of men's sports > women's sports thinking, in my opinion.

Women athletes should be salty if they win the World Cup, and only make a fifth of what the men make, just for getting out of group play. Whether the women could beat the men, or even the US under-15 boys' team*, is irrelevant. They don't play in a men's league; the ability to beat men is not an accurate measure of their worth. Relative to their actual field of competition, the USWNT is far more successful and accomplished than the men's team, and the fact that a mediocre men's team can still draw more money is more a reflection of the defects in our society and how we value womens' sports and women's achievements than it is in any imagined shortcomings that the women might have.

But, setting that aside, let's get back to the original thesis: you feel like the women's team "put the cart before the horse," and projected revenue based on a gold medal win. Then, they lost in the knockout stage, and got "bitten in the butt for it." Okay, cool... Why do you feel like that needed to happen? Why do you feel like they "needed" to get "smacked down to earth"? Because that's the part of your OP that I took exception to; it came across to me, whether you meant it that way or not, as a lowkey way of saying that the women needed to be put in their place.



* - And let's get this out of the way: First of All™, the US Men's under-15 soccer team is, ostensibly, the best under-15 boys soccer players in the entire country. There's nothing "roughly high school JV level boys" about that squad, so what's say we permanently put that silly talking point to rest, shall we? There's not a high school JV squad in the country that could beat that team, there's probably not a high school varsity squad in the country that could beat that team. Second of All, and more to the point, it's wrong to define a woman's worth by whether or not she can whoop a man's ass; it's wrong to define a woman's worth even by whether or not she can whoop a boy's ass. So, it follows logically that it's wrong to define a womens' sports team's worth by whether or not they can beat a mens' team, or even a boys' team, in the same sport; unless they're assigned to compete in the men's league (and they're not), that's not the measuring stick that we're supposed to be using.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

But, setting that aside, let's get back to the original thesis: you feel like the women's team "put the cart before the horse," and projected revenue based on a gold medal win. Then, they lost in the knockout stage, and got "bitten in the butt for it." Okay, cool... Why do you feel like that needed to happen? Why do you feel like they "needed" to get "smacked down to earth"? Because that's the part of your OP that I took exception to; it came across to me, whether you meant it that way or not, as a lowkey way of saying that the women needed to be put in their place.

Was I deliberately saying they need to be put in their place? I don't think that was my intent but I can appreciate that it may have come off that way. This is more a global issue than a national issue in my mind, and yet the way they chose to go about it in our current divisive climate bothered me. They put a lot of deliberately misleading "facts" out and I'm someone who is a skeptic by nature so I dug a little deeper and saw things didn't quite add up. I certainly don't deny they are fantastic athletes and deserve their due. That said, we do a lot to promote women's athletics in our country and soccer is perhaps the marquee women's team sport. If the rest of the world gave as much of a crap as we do I am sure the revenue would be there. I do enjoy watching women's soccer quite a bit. I just wasn't a fan of how it all played out. Their efforts would be better spent growing the women's game globally however they can, which probably means tours in soccer rich nations that don't have strong women's team, not crushing minnows 10-1 in half full American stadiums.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I'm not sure that I find the "facts" that you've cited in this thread to be as misleading as you do, but mileage may vary on that. What other things have they misled the people about?

I have to also say that I disagree with the premise that these women should consider it, on any material level, to be their responsibility to help grow women's soccer around the world. If they feel a higher calling to do so, then that's commendable, but they shouldn't feel obliged to, and they absolutely shouldn't feel as though it's something that they should do in deference to lobbying for higher pay.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

I'm not sure that I find the "facts" that you've cited in this thread to be as misleading as you do, but mileage may vary on that. What other things have they misled the people about?

I don't know what else there is, the entire premise of their argument for more pay was "we make more money than the men, but they are getting paid more." This was an outright cherry picking of revenue numbers at its best (omitting the men's team key revenue sources over a 4 year cycle), and a complete and deliberate lie at its worst. While I think highly of the team, I have to believe they knew damn well what they were doing when they chose to cite the revenues in the manner that they did. These things happen to really rub me the wrong way because I am fairly passionate about economic justice as a whole and I just don't happen to see an issue here, and I think misleading the public in what is ostensibly an attempt to prematurely renegotiate their collective bargaining agreement distracts us from real life issues and creates unnecessary divisions among otherwise like minded individuals. We obviously aren't going to agree, but the reason I suggest they grow the women's game globally is because it is my belief that if they want more money they should find ways to make more people pay more money for their product. At the end of the day, this is a business. I don't always like that, often I hate it.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I don't know what else there is, the entire premise of their argument for more pay was "we make more money than the men, but they are getting paid more." This was an outright cherry picking of revenue numbers at its best (omitting the men's team key revenue sources over a 4 year cycle), and a complete and deliberate lie at its worst. While I think highly of the team, I have to believe they knew damn well what they were doing when they chose to cite the revenues in the manner that they did. These things happen to really rub me the wrong way because I am fairly passionate about economic justice as a whole and I just don't happen to see an issue here, and I think misleading the public in what is ostensibly an attempt to prematurely renegotiate their collective bargaining agreement distracts us from real life issues and creates unnecessary divisions among otherwise like minded individuals. We obviously aren't going to agree, but the reason I suggest they grow the women's game globally is because it is my belief that if they want more money they should find ways to make more people pay more money for their product. At the end of the day, this is a business. I don't always like that, often I hate it.

You don't see an issue? Do you think that the women are already getting paid what they're worth? Do you object to them trying to get more money, or is it just that they didn't adhere to Marquis of Queensbury rules in doing so?

But, let's get back to your OP, again. Because, let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that I stipulate the way you have portrayed the events in question is the only correct and/or most valid interpretation of what's happened. Let's further suppose, for the sake of argument, that I even agreed with you... We still have a disconnect because you basically said that, because of this, the US women's soccer team deserved to lose at the Olympics, and I would like to reach some understanding about why you think that?

 

[pdxKingsFan]

You don't see an issue? Do you think that the women are already getting paid what they're worth? Do you object to them trying to get more money, or is it just that they didn't adhere to Marquis of Queensbury rules in doing so?

This is a tough question to answer. They play sports professionally - something most of us in this forum would consider a dream job - in a sport that doesn't generate a healthy profit - the current women's domestic league is heavily subsidized by the US Soccer Federation, including money pulled from what the Men's team generate, and the two or three previous Women's soccer leagues in the past two decades all went bankrupt. So imho - yes, they are paid proportionately to what they are worth. If I operate a failing business but sink 120 hours a week into it, do I deserve to make 3 times the wages I'd get working 40 hours at a paying job? That said - yes my issue was entirely how and when they went about it, not that they went for it at all.

I also don't think they deserved to lose, I just thought that maybe they should have focused on winning and asserting their dominance first and then renegotiated terms before the next victory tour gets scheduled. To that, yeah I do think there was some schadenfreude on my part. I have never claimed to be above that.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

There's no counterfactual for that, though: you can't know that, had they "focused on winning" in the manner that you prefer, that they still wouldn't have lost? That's the funny thing about a single-elimination tournament, all it takes if for you have a bad night, on the wrong night... You don't think that Serena Williams lost in the third round at the Olympics because she wasn't focused enough on winning, do you? Or Ross and Walsh-Jennings? Or either indoor volleyball team? Or either Australian basketball team?

Don't get me wrong, I think that the women's soccer team putting themselves in a position where their bargaining power was basically dependent on them winning a tournament that they ultimately did not win borders on ironic, but I'll be damned if I'm going to root for it to happen. That's just not what I'm about; I am not here for any of that.

 

[The Hammer]

We obviously aren't going to agree, but the reason I suggest they grow the women's game globally is because it is my belief that if they want more money they should find ways to make more people pay more money for their product. At the end of the day, this is a business. I don't always like that, often I hate it.

If sports wasn't a business, sports would SUCK. In fact modern sports would never have evolved at all. I LOVE that money is part of sports, and that the public interest decides where the money goes. One of the only forms of democracy left.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

I'm going to have to beg to differ with that, as it pertains to this discussion; I agree with the general idea of what you're saying, in the abstract, but it's too difficult, bordering on impossible, to separate generations of chauvinism and institutional sexism from the notion of meritocracy in women's sports. I mean, you have thousands of years of society (men and women) being taught that women aren't as good as men, not as strong, not as fast, not as smart, and so on, and then we get to the twenty-first century, where there is still little interest in women's sports, and people want to go, "Welp, that's the marketplace, better luck next time!"

Except, in reality, it's more nuanced than that, and there's way more than "democracy" that goes into whether or not people support the NWSL, or the WNBA, or the NPF, or women's boxing, etc., than to just solely (or even principally) attribute it to public interest, which is a big part of why I'm okay with the women's soccer players using whatever tactics that they think might work to try and get more money.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

There's no counterfactual for that, though: you can't know that, had they "focused on winning" in the manner that you prefer, that they still wouldn't have lost? That's the funny thing about a single-elimination tournament, all it takes if for you have a bad night, on the wrong night... You don't think that Serena Williams lost in the third round at the Olympics because she wasn't focused enough on winning, do you? Or Ross and Walsh-Jennings? Or either indoor volleyball team? Or either Australian basketball team?

Don't get me wrong, I think that the women's soccer team putting themselves in a position where their bargaining power was basically dependent on them winning a tournament that they ultimately did not win borders on ironic, but I'll be damned if I'm going to root for it to happen. That's just not what I'm about; I am not here for any of that.

I wasn't rooting for them to lose. It was an off the cuff remark. I never intended to get into this debate. I thought Hope Solo was classless in defeat and even focused more on that.

Incidentally, there was talk of them boycotting the tournament. So yeah, I do think they were distracted and took winning as a given.

And you are right - there is a ton of irony here. Not only in the timing of their argument coupled with the failure to win their major tournament, but that the women's team which is unquestionably the best in the world deliberately chose to take the safe route with guaranteed salaries while the men's team which is "mediocre" took performance based income.

I'm curious though Slim because I know you are a huge fan and are more to speed than I am - the Women's Basketball team's run of dominance blows the soccer team's out of the water. They don't lose almost ever. Has that team been asking for pay commensurate with the men's team?

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Most women's basketball players appear to be less confrontational in that way. Some might say that's a good thing, but mileage varies. Instead, they typically follow the path of least resistance to more money in overseas leagues, during the WNBA's offseason, to the point that some WNBA fans have started jokingly referring to the W as these womens' "summer jobs." If anything, most WNBA players just want their WNBA salaries to be more commensurate with their overseas money. Like, how are you going to have Maya Moore, one of the faces of your league, making close to three-quarters of a million dollars to play in China, and then tell her that you're only going to pay her eighty grand to play here?

I find the WNBA's salary situation to be appalling. Disregarding, for the moment, the question of whether their pay should be more commensurate with their male counterparts, their salary cap is such that they have fixed max salaries, combined with a baseline veteran status which triggers that salary. The practical application of which being that roughly twenty-five percent of the league makes exactly the same amount of money from their WNBA salary as the best player in the league. Now, that may not sound crazy to a non-fan, in light of the fact that the league and the salaries are both so small, but can you imagine what the NBA would look like if there were literally a hundred guys getting paid the same amount of money as LeBron James?

There's also the complication that the WNBA ownership group is a mixture of owners who also own an NBA affiliate (half of them) and owners who don't have even ten percent that kind of wealth (the other half), which frustrates any hopes of pay raises for WNBA players. Half the owners have the bread, and don't want to pay the players more, and the other half would love to pay the players more, but don't have the bread.

What I think that the players should be campaigning for is emancipation from the NBA. Maybe they'd fall flat on their face without the NBA's subsidy, and fold immediately. Maybe they'd have to contract again to, like, eight teams before finding an equilibrium. And maybe they'd flourish. I'm not actually sure if what they're doing financially is truly representative of what the market will bear. Here's what I am sure of: the WNBA has gone about as far as they can go, within the parameters that the NBA has limited them to. They're only allowed to negotiate with the limited set of sponsors that the NBA will allow them to negotiate with, they're not allowed to negotiate their own TV deal... They've pretty much capped out what they can do until or unless they have their own agency, so even trying to argue for their pay to be more commensurate with the men would be little more than a waste of time, at this stage.

 

[pdxKingsFan]

Very interesting. Especially that there is more money overseas for women. I did not know that. How do the women's teams in Europe have the money to pay? Are the games well attended? Supplemented by men's teams? Fully independent?

 

[Glenn]

Hope Solo was suspended for 6 months for her comments after the loss to Sweden.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

Very interesting. Especially that there is more money overseas for women. I did not know that. How do the women's teams in Europe have the money to pay? Are the games well attended? Supplemented by men's teams? Fully independent?

I don't know about all of the leagues, but the Russian leagues and the Chinese leagues are known as the ones that pay the most money, and they're subsidized by the government.