Many people and news organizations are complaining about a perceived gap in pay between Women’s World Cup competitors and their male counterparts, though when one looks at the pay in comparison to the revenues earned by the respective tournaments, women are overpaid.
Critics point to the fact that the winning team of 2014 World Cup, Germany, received $35 million, while the American women’s team which was victorious in Sunday’s final were given 17.5 times less, $2 million.
Supporters of this pay gap theory than continue to say,
Total prize money for the women’s World Cup: $15 million. Total for men’s Wold Cup: $576 million. http://t.co/xHJoOtOvEc
— adrienehill (@adrienehill) July 6, 2015
So, is FIFA a sexist organization, because that would be a strange accusation considering women are overpaid.
The Wall Street Journal reported in June that Fox Sports was poised to receive, “upwards of $17 million in sponsorship revenue for [The 2015 Women’s World Cup].”
The sponsor revenue for the 2014 Men’s World Cup, $529 million. That is 31 times greater than the women’s event.
But, the total prize money was 38 times greater for men. Let’s look at total revenue then.
The figures aren’t currently available for the 2015 Women’s World Cup, though we can compare the 2011 Women’s event and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
In 2011 the Women’s World Cup hosted in Germany had earnings of $72,818,500. The South Africa World Cup in 2010, had sales of $3.7 billion. That is 50 times greater.
The 2014 World Cup was even a greater success, $4.8 billion.
When comparing the pay of the players relative to the event’s revenue, one sees the discrepancy, that women players gain a higher percentage of the event’s earnings than men. In 2011, the payout for women’s event was $10 million. This would mean the players earn 13 percent of total revenues.
In 2010 the total men’s prize money was $348 million, that is nine percent of that tournament’s earnings. It was even worse for men in 2014 when they received seven percent of the revenue.
On average 53,592 attended Brazilian stadiums for the men in 2014 and while the women attracted an average gate of 26,029 in Canada. Nothing about the pay in the respective World Cups favors men, if anything the women have an advantage.