This is about more than soccer.
Twenty years after the U.S. Women’s soccer team showed the world what was possible, the current U.S. Women’s soccer team is still fighting for what is right.
This is the way several key members of the groundbreaking 1999 World Cup championship team see the mission the current team is on as it heads to France to defend its World Cup title. The 1999 team proved that women’s sports teams could draw a crowd when they played in sellout stadiums en route to beating China in front of 90,000 fans the World Cup Final at the Rose Bowl.
This year’s team, which opens play against Thailand on June 11, is looking to establish that they are both a great team and a team that deserves to be paid like one.
And the former team members are cheering them on.
“I’m exhausted to still be having this conversation,” two-time World Cup champion Brandi Chastain said recently when asked about the current team’s bid for pay equity at an ESPNW Summit. “But I’m energized by the courage of this team to continue fighting … For the group of women that are taking the stage in France, they will have to continue to be pushy and loud.”
Said former goalkeeping icon Brianna Scurry: “The girls on the team currently understand their social responsibility. Their job is to take that baton and move it forward. They’re doing that and it’s not easy.”
In March, the current team took that baton to a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles with 28 members filing a class action suit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The suit contends that the federation practices gender discrimination by paying women team members less than it pays the member of the men’s national team. According to the suit, a comparison of pay schedules for the teams shows that if each played 20 exhibition games in a year, members of the men’s team could earn an average of $263,320 each, while women’s team players could earn a maximum of $99,000.
All this despite the fact the women’s team has consistently outperformed the men’s on the field. The women’s team has won the World Cup three times — in 1991, 1999 and 2015. And it has never finished lower than third place. The U.S. men’s team has never played in a World Cup Final and hasn’t made it to the semifinals since 1930. It did not qualify for the most recent 2018 World Cup in Russia.
The low pay for women’s professional athletes has often been justified by their not bringing in the same revenue as men. That certainly won’t be the case this year with the men’s national team idle.
The women’s World Cup final in 2015 was the most-watched soccer game — played by men or women — ever televised on English-language television in America. With 25.4 million viewers, the game outdrew the NBA Finals that year and the Game 7 of the World Series in 2014.
So it’s no wonder that some athletes are starting to question whether their situation isn’t the result of institutionalized sexism, contending that the lack of revenue may have a lot to do with the lack of marketing and funding that women’s sports teams receive.
“There is so much potential, so much untapped potential,” midfielder Megan Rapinoe said at a recent news conference. “I don’t really understand why there is such a resistance toward going all in on women. It’s pretty clear women in sport have not been treated with the same care and financing as men’s sports have. No one is really arguing about that anymore. I don’t understand why the action step is not there with it.”
Former midfielder Julie Foudy said players have to speak out for what they believe is right. Foudy recalled how FIFA initially wanted to be in smaller venues when the U.S. hosted the 1999 World Cup but the team fought to be playing their game in venues like Giants Stadium and the Rose Bowl.
“I think we wanted to show what was possible, not just with women’s soccer but women’s sports,” she said “They spent four years marketing (the World Cup) and going to the grassroots. We had an organizing committee like you do with men’s events. The result was people showed up. We wanted people to see if you do invest and tap into this market, you will get a return.”
There are some recent signs that corporate America might be ready to start in vesting in women’s sports, seeing it as a way to support both athletes and women in general. On Thursday, Visa announced a five-year sponsorship deal with U.S. Soccer that requires at least 50% of the money go toward the women’s national team and other programming initiatives to benefit the women’s game. It would not put a dollar figure on its investment.
“Women athletes and women’s sport in general are underrepresented in marketing and in promotion and that contributes to gender inequality,” Mary Ann Reilly, Senior vice president of North America Marketing at Visa, told Forbes. “So we want to make sure we are helping to close that gap.”
Yes, this is about more than soccer.