The great news: USWNT won the World Cup in front of a huge TV audience of 15.9 million viewers. Every venue the USWNT played in during the Women’s World Cup (WWC) was sold out.
The good news: more than 1 million fans attended WWC games for an average attendance of 21,000+ per game. And the WWC generated $131 million dollars in revenue for FIFA. This was clearly a successful tournament.
The bad news? Those numbers pale in comparison to the men’s game. The Men’s World Cup drew more than 3 million in attendance for an average of 47,000 fans per game. The Men’s World Cup, according to Forbes generates 6.1 billion in revenue for FIFA.
While the women have apparently achieved parity (or even exceeded it) in popularity with the men’s World Cup with US audiences, globally they have not. This is due to global misogyny and will take a global anti-misogyny campaign over, possibly, decades to change that fact. However, it’s not only a global issue. Women soccer players, even in the US, do not get your attention at the club level.
The pay disparity between men and women would remain even if there never another men’s World Cup. That’s because at the club level men make a ton more money than women. Even comparing Major League Soccer (MLS) with National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and excluding the massive salary differences over seas, you will still find that men are paid substantially more than women.
The average annual guaranteed compensation for MLS players hit $416,000 this year. That’s small in comparison to the elite European Leagues. But that number is higher than the entire salary budget of an NWSL team — combined where each team spread a maximum of $315,000 for ALL of the players.
Consider this: men who play in the elite European Leagues never have to appear in a World Cup to make a substantially greater amount of money than women who win the WWC, and that would be true if men never got paid a dime by their soccer federation for being on the national team.
And why is that? The fans simply don’t pay attention to women’s soccer when it ain’t the World Cup. Where MLS is averaging 20,597 fans per game this year, the NWSL is drawing 5514 fans per game. As poor as MLS TV ratings are (including out-of-home viewing and Spanish Language simulcasts MLS averages about 330-350,000 viewers per game) the NWSL averages about a third of that. MLS has 22 national corporate sponsors, NWSL has only 4-5 national sponsors.
But here’s the good news: this is much easier to fix than the global misogyny hurting the women’s game around the globe. It cost you absolutely nothing to fix the TV ratings. If you are willing to give #EqualAttention to NWSL, it will take two hours of your time 14 times through the rest of this season, and then do this again next season and every season to follow.
And we only need 3% of you who watched the WWC final to tune into NWSL broadcasts to get the same ratings on US television as the English Premier League. This would give NWSL games an average of 477,000 viewers. With similar numbers the EPL gets $167 million from NBC. That would be a huge cash injection into the women’s game.
If you live in an NWSL market also commit to going your hometown’s games, and if you can, buy season tickets. If NWSL attendance drew the 20,587 that MLS draws that would also result in a massive cash infusion by nearly quadrupling the number of tickets sold.
You are the solution. Attend the games. Watch the nationally broadcast games. Don’t just buy USWNT merchandise. Buy NWSL merchandise. And promote the #EqualAttention campaign using that hashtag on social media. The women you cheered on deserve year round support and at both club and country levels.
Wednesday, Jul 10, 2019 · 10:10:18 PM +00:00
·
RfrancisR
Earlier I wrote that the average MLS guaranteed compensation was larger than the entire salary budget for an NWSL team. That info is outdated. Up-to-date data shows that an entire NWSL’s teams salary budget slightly surpasses the average MLS’s guaranteed compensation 421,000 to 417,000. The point, however, stands.
NWSL salary info is here: www.oregonlive.com/...