Speaker 1: One of the world's biggest sporting events is about to
Speaker 1: return in a big way, the Women's World Cup, kicking
Speaker 1: off on July twenty.
Speaker 2: And one of the co hosts, Australia. Ticket sales have
Speaker 2: been so hogh.
Speaker 3: The biggest stadiums are being pressed into action.
Speaker 1: The tournament is already being billed as the grandest ever.
Speaker 2: There are count down for the Women's World Cup, and
Speaker 2: so is of course, the US women's national team, considered
Speaker 2: to be the team to beat.
Speaker 1: As you heard their excitement is building across the globe
Speaker 1: for the twenty twenty three Women's World Cup. On the
Speaker 1: fabulous finish from Trinity Roping, there are two goals all
Speaker 1: the time. There are more teams playing this year than
Speaker 1: ever before, Viewership both live and on TV are expected
Speaker 1: to break records, and the level of play has never
Speaker 1: been higher. Fucking from Cook when.
Speaker 2: It go all away.
Speaker 1: The broadcast. This year's US team includes four time World
Speaker 1: Cup players Alex Morgan, Kelly O'Hara, and Meghan Rappino, and
Speaker 1: she recently announced this World Cup would be her last.
Speaker 1: When the Women's World Cup takes off next month, the
Speaker 1: US Women's national team we'll be shooting for an unprecedented
Speaker 1: three peat.
Speaker 2: The US women aren't going for that historic three peat win.
Speaker 2: No men's team or women's team has ever accomplished that.
Speaker 1: Would I be happy with anything short of thirst Fred win. No,
Speaker 1: absolutely not so. No shortage of things that are the
Speaker 1: most and the highest. But you know what's not the
Speaker 1: most and definitely not the highest the money these world
Speaker 1: class athletes take home. We all know about the persistent
Speaker 1: pay gap between men and women. In the US. Women
Speaker 1: still typically earn about eighty two cents for every dollar
Speaker 1: earned by men, and that divide is notoriously wider in
Speaker 1: the sports world. But Bloomberg's Jennah Haw crunch the numbers,
Speaker 1: and she reports that the gap in pay between the
Speaker 1: men's and women's World Cup teams is at another level
Speaker 1: of absurd.
Speaker 3: The best performing women's team in the World Cup this
Speaker 3: year will take home six point two million, split among
Speaker 3: the players. The sixteen worst performing teams and the men's
Speaker 3: World Cup all get nine million each.
Speaker 1: I'm Weskasova today on the big take. Everyone's making money
Speaker 1: off the Women's World Cup except the women. Jenna, So
Speaker 1: good to see you.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me, happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're excited about the World.
Speaker 4: Cup, so excited, can't wait.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm really looking forward to it too, but I
Speaker 1: have to say your story through a very big splash
Speaker 1: of cold water on my enthusiasm.
Speaker 4: I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of factors on the other side
Speaker 3: ahead of the game that people have been watching very closely,
Speaker 3: and that will be really interesting to see how everything
Speaker 3: pans out.
Speaker 1: Well, Jenny, you right that the twenty twenty three Women's
Speaker 1: World Cup is the most anticipated female sporting event ever, Like,
Speaker 1: why do you say that? What do you base that on?
Speaker 3: By nearly all metrics, interest in the Women's World Cup
Speaker 3: has pretty much skyrocketed, whether we're looking at viewership from
Speaker 3: previous tournaments, whether we're looking at tickets sold versus attendance.
Speaker 3: There's now more sponsors than ever.
Speaker 1: Here's Meghan Rappino herself speaking about the anticipation around this
Speaker 1: year's World Cup.
Speaker 5: If you're not tuning in, sort of missing out on
Speaker 5: a massive cultural moment, you're going to see the best
Speaker 5: product on the field, and that's because players are going
Speaker 5: to be able to be put in a position to
Speaker 5: actually do that and just focus on the game and
Speaker 5: go out there and provide the entertainment of everybody wants.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's pretty accurate to say that
Speaker 3: the Women's World Cup is at the top of its
Speaker 3: game right now.
Speaker 1: And what do they expect the viewership to be? Like,
Speaker 1: give us a basis of comparison of just how big
Speaker 1: it's going to be.
Speaker 3: In the previous World Cup in France in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: there were over one point one billion viewers across the
Speaker 3: whole tournament and they're expected to exceed that by quite
Speaker 3: a bit. And that's driven by a couple of factors.
Speaker 3: They are expecting a very strong Asian audience this year
Speaker 3: because the tournament is being hosted jointly by Australia and
Speaker 3: New Zealand, and they think there's a really untapped market
Speaker 3: from several Asian countries, whether it be China, Japan, Korea,
Speaker 3: and they're really hoping to tap that market this year.
Speaker 1: And so that's like TV viewership right, yes, correct? And
Speaker 1: then what about people who attained in person? What is
Speaker 1: that like?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're also hoping to break records from ticket sales too.
Speaker 3: They've currently sold over one million tickets and the goal
Speaker 3: is to sell over one point five And here's another
Speaker 3: measure of just how popular women's soccer has become. For
Speaker 3: the first time this year, there's thirty two teams competing
Speaker 3: all around the world, and that's the same number of
Speaker 3: teams that had competed in the men's tournament last year. Previously,
Speaker 3: there was anywhere between an eight to sixteen number of
Speaker 3: teams gap between the two tournaments. And many people are
Speaker 3: even saying that the game has become both more global
Speaker 3: and inclusive because a number of the new countries making
Speaker 3: their debut this year are for more developing countries, whether
Speaker 3: it's Haiti, Panama or the Philippines.
Speaker 1: And yet, Jenna, you found looking at all these numbers
Speaker 1: that despite all the money and excitement behind Women's World
Speaker 1: Cup soccer football, depending on where you live, there's still
Speaker 1: this persistent wage gap between female players and male players.
Speaker 3: So this is an issue that FIFA, the governing body
Speaker 3: of international football, has really made a cornerstone of prioritizing
Speaker 3: in this tournament and future tournaments. The Cup prize for
Speaker 3: the women this year has swelled to over one hundred
Speaker 3: and ten million. It was thirty million in the last one,
Speaker 3: so we're talking big games here, but that still really
Speaker 3: pales in comparison to what all the men are earning.
Speaker 4: So some numbers for you.
Speaker 3: The World Cup prize in Qatar last year was over
Speaker 3: four hundred and forty million, and that.
Speaker 1: Was for the men's World Cup, and that was for.
Speaker 3: The men's tournament, correct, And so.
Speaker 1: What does that translate per player, per winning team.
Speaker 3: The top winning players are going to be guaranteed to
Speaker 3: take home around two hundred and seventy thousand, which in
Speaker 3: terms of women's soccer is a very meaningful salary. A
Speaker 3: number of players make that amount of money over the
Speaker 3: course of a year.
Speaker 4: This is just for one month of play.
Speaker 3: So Megan Rappino, who is a player for the US
Speaker 3: women's national team, she makes around two hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars over the course of one year for her
Speaker 3: base salary. And another important provision that FIFA has also
Speaker 3: added is that every player is guaranteed to take home
Speaker 3: at least thirty thousand dollars, so regardless, they will be
Speaker 3: compensated for this tournament. And that wasn't the case when
Speaker 3: the tournament first started in the nineteen nineties. There was
Speaker 3: no cup prize for anybody.
Speaker 1: How does the payout to the top performing women's team
Speaker 1: compare to say, like the payout for the worst performing men's.
Speaker 4: Team, the gap is still massive.
Speaker 3: The best performing women's team in the World Cup this
Speaker 3: year will take home six point two million split among
Speaker 3: the players. The sixteen worst performing teams and the men's
Speaker 3: World Cup all get nine million each.
Speaker 1: And just to put that another way, the winning team
Speaker 1: in this year's women's tournament is set to receive ten
Speaker 1: point five million dollars total, and as we mentioned, six
Speaker 1: point two million of that is earmarked for distribution to
Speaker 1: its players. In comparison, the winner in last year's men's
Speaker 1: World Cup, which was Argentina, netted forty two million dollars total.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the salaries you talked about,
Speaker 1: Megan Rappino, who's a big star, makes about two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars a year. But what is the average
Speaker 1: salary for a women's professional soccer player.
Speaker 4: It really depends on the country.
Speaker 3: In the US, it's somewhere between like seventy to one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand. There's guaranteed minimum salary levels. In the US,
Speaker 3: that guaranteed level is around thirty five thousand dollars. Again,
Speaker 3: and that's for one year's worth of play thirty.
Speaker 1: Five thousand dollars, And you say FIFA has really made
Speaker 1: this a priority. I guess my first question is why
Speaker 1: why are they concentrating on this so much?
Speaker 3: When you look at most men and women's sports in
Speaker 3: the US. On the women's side, they generally say it's
Speaker 3: not fair to compare the men and the women. The
Speaker 3: WNBA says this a lot. The National Women's Soccer League
Speaker 3: also says this a lot. They say the men's league
Speaker 3: is older, don't compare them between the two. It's not
Speaker 3: a fair comparison. We're doing our own thing and we're
Speaker 3: working on it. When it comes to FIFA, that messaging
Speaker 3: is not there at all. The FIFA president Gianni Infante
Speaker 3: has made it a commitment to try to reach equal
Speaker 3: prize money for both the men and women starting in
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty six and twenty twenty seven tournaments, and
Speaker 3: one of the ways that he's really trying to do
Speaker 3: that is shoring up better media rights for the men
Speaker 3: and women.
Speaker 1: Is it realistic to think that they can shrink that
Speaker 1: enormous gap in just a couple of seasons.
Speaker 3: There's a long way to go, for sure. This tournament
Speaker 3: on the women's side has shown tremendous interest and tremendous
Speaker 3: investment from other areas, whether it be corporate sponsors or
Speaker 3: different partners. Like I said before, there's more sponsors than
Speaker 3: ever now with the Women's World Cup and shoring up
Speaker 3: better deals like that is what's going to be the
Speaker 3: thing that's going to narrow that gap.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the sponsorship numbers. How does World
Speaker 1: Cup Soccer make its money?
Speaker 3: So the World Cup really makes its money by selling
Speaker 3: media rights. So you go to a broadcasting company, whether
Speaker 3: it's the BBC or Fox or Telemundo, and you say,
Speaker 3: I will give you the exclusive rights to air this
Speaker 3: in a certain country, but you have to pay me
Speaker 3: x amount millions of dollars And.
Speaker 1: What does that amount to worldwide for the Women's World Cup.
Speaker 3: It's a difficult question because historically the men and women's
Speaker 3: media rights have been bundled together. So FIFA has sold
Speaker 3: them to a broadcasting company and you just get access
Speaker 3: to both.
Speaker 4: That is a huge revenue driver for FIFA.
Speaker 3: It's projected to account for over a third of their
Speaker 3: revenue in the next four year cycle and from twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen to twenty twenty two, FIFA brought in over three
Speaker 3: point four billion dollars worth of revenue, all due to
Speaker 3: media rights. But this year was the first year that
Speaker 3: FIFA decided to sell the rights separately. Because the interest
Speaker 3: of the women's game has boomed in the last several years,
Speaker 3: FIFA made a commitment to say, hey, we want to
Speaker 3: sell this separately. It's bringing in its own viewership. These
Speaker 3: women can hold their own and sources have said previously
Speaker 3: that the women's World Cup rights this year is worth
Speaker 3: around three hundred million three.
Speaker 1: Hundred million, and then what about the men's rights.
Speaker 3: So it's hard to parse exactly the numbers for what
Speaker 3: the men's broadcasting rights are worth, but we know that
Speaker 3: offers for the women's rights we're coming in at about
Speaker 3: five to six percent of what the men's rights are
Speaker 3: actually worth.
Speaker 1: After the break, FIFA wants TV networks to pay up. FIFA,
Speaker 1: it takes in all this money for the broadcast rights,
Speaker 1: but then how does that money reach the teams and
Speaker 1: then reach the players.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's no direct tie in the contracts between
Speaker 3: the women players and FIFA that mandates that x percentage
Speaker 3: of the revenue money directly goes to players. But FIFA
Speaker 3: has said in order to reach this equal parody and
Speaker 3: cut prize, better media rights need to happen for the women.
Speaker 3: The president, Infantino has promised that as they get these
Speaker 3: bigger media rights, they will be able to pay players more.
Speaker 3: Infantino has said he remains very committed to this issue
Speaker 3: of equal parity, and that is unlike any major president
Speaker 3: of a sports agency that we've seen before.
Speaker 1: If we know there's so much interest in this game
Speaker 1: in high viewership, which means the broadcasters are going to
Speaker 1: be able to sell lots of advertising and probably sell
Speaker 1: it at pretty good prices, what's the hold up with
Speaker 1: them paying more for something that is demonstrably so profitable
Speaker 1: and so popular.
Speaker 3: It's difficult to pin down an answer. The president of
Speaker 3: FIVA has just been saying, these broadcasting companies are trying
Speaker 3: to lowball the women because previously they haven't had to
Speaker 3: put a dollar figure because again, this men and women's
Speaker 3: tournament was bundled together. Previously, they were bundled because at
Speaker 3: a certain point, interest hadn't boomed for the women's tournament,
Speaker 3: and so it was just sort of easier to sell
Speaker 3: them together. But now that interest has sort of skyrocketed
Speaker 3: and many people are just watching the Men's World Cup.
Speaker 3: Out of their own volition, they thought this is the
Speaker 3: time and this is the first year to unbundle them
Speaker 3: and sell the rights separately.
Speaker 1: So you would think that given the popularity of this sport,
Speaker 1: FIFA would just say, no, you got to pay us
Speaker 1: more for the rights, because the networks are going to
Speaker 1: want to broadcast these games, aren't they.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what's been happening. So FIFA kept rejecting
Speaker 3: low offer bids for months and months on end, but
Speaker 3: as we got closer to the tournament, roughly a month out,
Speaker 3: they still hadn't reached a deal with major European countries,
Speaker 3: whether it be the UK, Spain, Italy, and so finally
Speaker 3: FIFA had accepted a bid from BBC, which again we
Speaker 3: think it's around nine to ten million, which consequently is
Speaker 3: around five to six percent, as we said before, of
Speaker 3: what the men's rights are worth.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about the discrepancies in pay in media rights,
Speaker 1: but you also write that the conditions that the players
Speaker 1: actually play under our different between women and men too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a number of struggles that these women have
Speaker 3: had to overcome to compete in the World Cup. That
Speaker 3: just haven't been present for any of the men's tournaments
Speaker 3: leading up. There was a survey done and about ninety
Speaker 3: three percent think there should be improvement and pay in
Speaker 3: prize money. Another nearly forty percent of players in the
Speaker 3: qualifying tournaments said they didn't have access to any mental
Speaker 3: health support, more than two thirds of them didn't have
Speaker 3: sufficient examining ahead of playing, and around a third of
Speaker 3: players had said they didn't think there was enough recovery
Speaker 3: time in between games. There's also a number of new
Speaker 3: countries that are participating in the World Cup this year.
Speaker 3: The field of teams was expanded by an additional eight teams,
Speaker 3: and some of the teams that are competing for the
Speaker 3: first time have also had to overcome really adverse conditions. Haiti,
Speaker 3: it's their first time competing on the World Cup stage
Speaker 3: this year. It's the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,
Speaker 3: and they have an had access to even a home field.
Speaker 3: They have to play in the neighboring Dominican Republic country
Speaker 3: to actually participate in qualifying tournaments.
Speaker 1: Jenner, What have the players themselves said about these gaps
Speaker 1: in pay and conditions in broadcast rights all of it.
Speaker 3: I spoke with a Haiti player, and she was just
Speaker 3: so thrilled to even be participating in the tournament. She said,
Speaker 3: I'm so happy to be making history. We're not finished yet,
Speaker 3: there's more work to be done, and I'm happy.
Speaker 4: To be a part of that.
Speaker 3: On the US side, there's a little bit of a
Speaker 3: different perspective. The US has won the World Cup four
Speaker 3: times now, and I think many of them leading up
Speaker 3: to it were very angry. They've showed that they can
Speaker 3: do it. They've showed that they can be champions. By
Speaker 3: most metrics, you could argue that they're more talented in
Speaker 3: terms of winning than the men's counterpart in the US.
Speaker 4: I mean, you can just look at the numbers.
Speaker 3: The women's US World Cup team has won four championships
Speaker 3: in the last twenty five years. The men's team has
Speaker 3: actually never won a way World Cup ever.
Speaker 1: And these complaints have started to bubble up and become
Speaker 1: public in a way that they hadn't before.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, there were several lawsuits filed by the US women's
Speaker 3: national team over discrimination of pay, and this all bubbled
Speaker 3: up and reached a lot of national attention.
Speaker 2: The six year battle for equal pay for members of
Speaker 2: the US women's national soccer team has finally come to
Speaker 2: an end with a landmark settlement. It's yet another achievement
Speaker 2: for one of the winningest teams in sports history.
Speaker 3: And it ended up last year that in their new
Speaker 3: collective bargaining agreement that the US Soccer Federation actually etched
Speaker 3: into their agreement that there would be equal pay. Now,
Speaker 3: all the men's and women's World Cup prize money in
Speaker 3: the US is pooled together and then split equally.
Speaker 1: So how does that work in real life?
Speaker 3: So they take the winnings from the men's team in
Speaker 3: a given year, and they take all the winnings from
Speaker 3: a women's team in the given year, and they pull
Speaker 3: all that money up and then split it directly in half.
Speaker 3: Half go to the men, half go to the women,
Speaker 3: and then those teams, amongst themselves, decide to how to
Speaker 3: split it up among their players.
Speaker 1: And that's winnings. That's different from salaries that individual players aren't.
Speaker 1: Correct in a different world, it would be the men's
Speaker 1: team that really benefited from this, because the women's team
Speaker 1: is often the champion. But even though the men's team
Speaker 1: hasn't won, they still are handing over more money to
Speaker 1: the team that has won.
Speaker 3: Yeah, upon first glance, it sounds like, oh, now the
Speaker 3: men are just going to be mooching off the champions
Speaker 3: who are the women, But again, that's unfortunately not the case. Again,
Speaker 3: the worst performing sixteen teams in the men's World Cup
Speaker 3: will automatically take home nine million. So actually, this equal
Speaker 3: pay that's been etched into their previous contract is actually
Speaker 3: a big payday for the women and is a very meaningful.
Speaker 1: Change when we come back. How long will it take
Speaker 1: to close this pay gap? Is there any talk of
Speaker 1: the next step they've decided to divide the winnings and
Speaker 1: make them equal. Is there any movement on the salaries
Speaker 1: for the players?
Speaker 3: Salaries has been a big area of negotiation for both
Speaker 3: the US women's national team and the men's national team. However,
Speaker 3: unfortunately the US is already making such strides with this
Speaker 3: splitting of the cup prize money, and no other country
Speaker 3: has really done this on a permanent basis.
Speaker 4: Canada has an interim.
Speaker 3: Deal to do this, but because they're already sort of
Speaker 3: paving the road, there hasn't been much leverage to push
Speaker 3: the needle even more forward.
Speaker 1: So Jenna, there's this big goal by FIFA to make
Speaker 1: things right pretty soon. Will we see this gap meaningfully
Speaker 1: closed in the near future.
Speaker 3: It's going to depend a lot on the future of
Speaker 3: these media rights and broadcasting deals. Right now, it's not
Speaker 3: looking so bright considering the offers are coming in again
Speaker 3: around five to six percent of what the men are making.
Speaker 3: But FIVA has also said they remain very committed to
Speaker 3: this issue, and again that's a departure from what we've
Speaker 3: seen from previous heads of other major sporting associations in
Speaker 3: the US.
Speaker 1: As you continue to report on this story and there's
Speaker 1: a lot happening, what are you watching for? What's the
Speaker 1: most important thing to keep an eye on leading.
Speaker 4: Up to the tournament.
Speaker 3: Will be really interested in seeing how ticket sales pan out.
Speaker 4: FIFA has made it a goal.
Speaker 3: To try to sell over one point five million tickets,
Speaker 3: which would be a record for any previous women's tournament,
Speaker 3: and they're at around a little over one point one
Speaker 3: million right now, so we'll be really interesting to see
Speaker 3: if they can actually reach their goal. Another metric that
Speaker 3: we're watching closely is viewership numbers. Viewership numbers is a
Speaker 3: really strong indicator of what media writes should look like
Speaker 3: when people are actually have eyes on the game on TV. Screens,
Speaker 3: so we'll be watching that closely. Of course, we'll be
Speaker 3: watching the play closely. If the US wins again this year,
Speaker 3: it would be their fifth overall Women's World Cup title,
Speaker 3: and only one other team has achieved that before on
Speaker 3: the men and women's side, and that's the Brazil's men team.
Speaker 1: Jenna, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me. This was fun.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take.
Speaker 1: It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio. For more
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Speaker 1: dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
Speaker 1: Vicky Virgalina. Our senior producer is Catherine Fink. Rebecca Shasson
Speaker 1: is our producer. Our associate producer is Sam Gebauer. Phil
Speaker 1: de Garcia is our engineer, with additional production support from
Speaker 1: Nieli Haramo Plata. Our original music was composed by Leo Sidrin.
Speaker 1: I'm west Kasova. We'll be back on Monday with another
Speaker 1: Big Take. Have a great weekend.