If you didn’t know the FIFA World Cup is going on in Australia and New Zealand and England is among the favourites.
However, the lead-up to the event has featured the timeless debate of payment of payments and the profile of the women’s game, in comparison with the men. I want to explore the debate between Equality and the economics of female sport in a mixed sport like football.
Let’s first look at equality. It is right that people from different genders should be paid the same for doing the same job. In the UK this is the law, however, this has not fully been realised for several reasons. In professional sport. Many, mostly men, say “The Lionesses would be beaten by an under-18 team”, therefore we need to be clear that it is a different game and physicality, speed and strength are not the key elements of the game to value. Skill, speed of thought and action are far more important here and the Woman and girl’s dame demonstrates this. The same issue was raised with Tennis and now equal payments are made to women and men.
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The argument I have heard for many years, I did coach Women and girls for a few years, was that there is no demand and therefore it should not draw the same investment. My view is that snooker and darts didn’t have a following until television saw the opportunity to show a lot of these “sports” at low cost. For example, the cost of the World Snooker Championships to the BBC is equivalent to one football match. It is interesting to see the lack of investment by the main channels in this world cup with nowhere near as many headline football celebrities being flown out to the other side of the world. |
The case for equality has been made on an equality basis i.e., people should receive the same treatment and reward irrelevant of gender. However, why doesn’t this work for sports organisations?
FIFA tried to extract more income from the European Federations television providers knowing that most had laws in place that world cups must be free-to-air provision. The UK government only made this covering of women’s world cups recently. However, the television providers fell short of the targeted revenue for FIFA by $100 million. This obviously then leads to the women’s world cup, in isolation, being economically not as viable as the men’s. The players are paid a quarter of the fees paid to the men’s teams, in addition to the prize money most Federations also have additional prize money for the tournament. This is a matter put on hold by the FA until after the tournament. In fairness to the FA the per-diem payments to players i.e., their daily allowance, is the same for men and women.
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Clearly, there is a disconnect and lack of thinking about how to move this issue forward without any thought of the significant profits made from the men’s World Cup. What’s the solution? For me, if you talk about equality, you must also walk equality. For me, it would make logical sense to group the World Cups together in one package and then commercial rights can be pooled and shared equitably. However, dare I say that we will need men to make this decision! |
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The recognition of the men’s and women’s games being the same but different then needs to meet the aspiration of an “equal state” which is real equality. This would then stop the women’s teams from being asked about equal pay and more about tactics and techniques as they are high-quality players who think and act at a high level.
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