Waiting for equal pay in women’s football

As long as men’s national teams make more money than their soccer-playing counterparts, equal pay will hold. comment.

It is rare for the men’s team to publicly support the women. This just happened in Canada. The men’s team criticized the federation for its ignorance of Olympic champions via Twitter, but they did it on their own. Because even for them, angry men, the financial management of the Association is a black hole. The men even went on strike before the World Cup in Qatar.

Women who want to win the world title in the summer followed suit at the weekend. There is no training and no meetings in preparation for the SheBelieves Cup, a major tournament where they face the United States on Thursday.

The hits of female football players were by no means a precedent: Australia, Denmark and Spain also succeeded in this. In principle, federations are urgently advised to make transparent the financial figures released by the women’s and men’s national teams.

Then fair conditions can be better understood for all parties involved. And it has worked in Germany so far because the German Football Association publishes its balance sheet. The men’s national team generates over €50 million from their international matches from advertising and television rights; Ladies’ losses are supported by union with men’s income. For comparison: for the last Women’s World Cup in 2019, FIFA gave bonuses of 26 million euros to all teams, in 2022 the men’s world champions Argentina alone received 42 million euros from the FIFA total. As long as this is the case, equal pay will remain suspended. Right about that.