re: US Woman's Soccer Team files wage suit

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The filing, citing figures from the USSF's 2015 financial report, says that despite the women's team generating nearly $20 million more revenue last year than the U.S. men's team, the women are paid almost four times less.

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fricked up if true

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Anna Kournikova is one of the highest grossing female tennis players ever and she isnt even top 500 all time.

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Getting paid by sponsors is different from getting paid from competitions.

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Not sure about that. The women's team seemed to have a good bit of buzz and viewership during their run.

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This number has been, and will continue to be, misrepresented in the media as a grand sign that women’s soccer, and soccer in general, is a big-time sport in the country. If it does better than America’s past time, how can it not? But here are a few other numbers for you: 30.4 million, 24.4 million, 31.1 million, 21.4 million. Those are the average viewership numbers for the last four Olympics (2008 Beijing, 2010 Vancouver, 2012 London, 2014 Sochi), the latter two of which featured every major primetime telecast showing recorded sports. And those aren’t one two-hour program on a holiday weekend with a captive audience, like Sunday night’s win. That’s the average of 15 days of coverage lasting approximately 3 hours and 30 minutes each. There’s no comparison.

Does that mean swimming, track, figure skating, hockey and bobsled were growing in the United States? Of course not. It means that we, as a country, like to wrap ourselves in the flag while watching sporting events. It has been this way and it will continue to be this way. Women’s soccer is an accepted, crossover sport that America now enjoys rather than tolerates. But that’s all. Expect ratings 50-75% higher than the Women’s World Cup next summer during the entire fortnight of the Rio Olympics, which will be aired mostly live on NBC. Those ratings will be huge, NBC will be pleased, but it won’t mean anything outside those two weeks, the same as the WWC numbers. Even when Michael Phelps won eight gold medals — the greatest sports achievement of the century — swimming barely made a blip after the Olympic cauldron was snuffed.

Girls will still continue to play soccer in grade school, middle school and high school. A few might be more inclined to play the sport after watching their countrywomen bring home another title. But just like with swimming and track and figure skating, interest in a one-off, patriotic event shouldn’t be confused with a revolution. In a few days, the heroes of this summer — Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe — will go back to playing in the National Women’s Soccer League and very few of those 25 million viewers will care. They, like other stars of secondary American sports, are like eclipses, shining brightly once every few years before receding back out of the spotlight.

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Well if they want equality then what will they say if a transgender male wants to play women's soccer?

Equality isn't a one way street.

The USWNT are great at what they do, but it's just like when teachers bitch about getting paid less. You teach half the year and no one pays to go watch some teach an algebra lesson.

You couldn't pay me to go to a USWNT game.

Without reading all of the responses in this thread, I'm going to say that they need to frick off. It's an extremely easy concept. If the womens game was as much of a money maker as the mens game, they would make the same money. The truth though, is most people don't give a shite about womens professional sports.

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I never understood how our women are tops in the world, but our men are towards the bottom.

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Most other countries didn't start putting money in Women's soccer until somewhat recently. We were miles ahead, but a lot of those countries are catching up.

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men are towards the bottom.

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They're mid pack, not a WC contender, but also respected enough because they are talented enough to beat the best teams in the world, just not consistently.

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women are tops in the world

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The US was one of the first countries to invest in women's soccer. It is much the same as why are men are playing catch up. One sport we were a leader the other we are fighting an uphill battle against countries with IMG style academies for soccer that feed their national teams.

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I never understood how our women are tops in the world, but our men are towards the bottom.

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Seriously? The same reason Uconn Women dominate and Mens College basketball has the most insane post season.

Parity doesnt exist in womens sports for a reason.

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How much more money does the Men's game make over the Women's?

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That's not even the real question, if you're only talking about the money made by the national teams.

The question is how much do we have to pay to get the best possible players.
That number is a lot lower for women because their pro league pay is nowhere near as high as the men.

These women are basically asking for equal pay without any other reason than that it is more "fair".