Carli Lloyd pens an editorial in the NY Times to argue for equal pay. Never knew Kessler's tactics included high-end PR, but maybe he's not the only cook in the kitchen on this one. A sampling:
There does appear to be an edge to her commentary (if it is indeed her commentary) on the ancillary issues of per-diems and accommodations and field quality and so on. But the meat of the argument has to be what value the USWNT creates for US Soccer relative to the USMNT. If it's even anything close to parity, then a 5x pay disparity is indeed shockingly callous, short-sighted (is Sunil thinking "where else can they go for employment"?), and anachronistic.When wecaptured the Women’s World Cup title in Canada in July, we drew the highest American television rating for soccer in history and, according to a financial report published by U.S. Soccer last month, helped generate $17.7 million in profit for the federation.
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I won’t bury you with numbers, but there are a few important basic facts worth noting. Each year, the United States men’s and women’s national teams each play a minimum of 20 friendly matches. The top five players on the men’s team make an average of $406,000 each year from these games. The top five women are guaranteed only $72,000 each year.
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I understand that the men’s World Cup generates vastly more money globally than the women’s event, but the simple truth is that U.S. Soccer projects that our team will generate a profit of $5.2 million in 2017 while the men are forecast to lose almost $1 million. Yet we get shortchanged coming and going.
I was on the road for about 260 days last year. When I am traveling internationally, I get $60 a day for expenses. Michael Bradley gets $75. Maybe they figure that women are smaller and thus eat less.
When Hope Solo or Alex Morgan, say, makes a sponsor appearance for U.S. Soccer, she gets $3,000. When Geoff Cameron or Jermaine Jones makes the same sort of appearance, he gets $3,750.