AudiBlog: After studying the numbers, it's clear the Women's U.S. Soccer team is paid too much money

Jul 10, 2019

11:32

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The title is obviously outrageous, but if you read through to the end you might get the point.

After the US Women's Soccer team won the 2019 FIFA World Cup, a chant of "equal pay" could be heard in the crowd. In addition to the emotionomics chant heard by the crowd, numerous news outlets including Vanity Fair, CNN, VOX, Splinter, and Business Insider led with misleading headlines about viewership in the Women's World Cup vs. the 2018 Men's World Cup. Let's break down the numbers to understand why this is another manufactured, and completely baseless complaint.

The basic idea is that the US Women's team is being paid less for the same (or more) viewership as the US Men's soccer team. The official statement was that women's team is making only 40% of what the men's team is paid.

Let's talk about viewers

"The Women's World Cup ratings top Men's 2018 Championship Game by 22%"

Here's the big difference. By big, I mean it is a massive, un-ignorable difference. The 22% win by the Women's team is talking about the viewership in the United States. This year, the Women's Cup garnered almost 15 million TV viewers inside the US. That is, in fact, higher than the US viewers for the 2018 Men's cup. The problem?