Equal pay for women's soccer or no Fed funding bill

[BryanS]

U.S. Soccer Says Women’s Team Has Been Paid More Than Men’s Team

I just assumed that the pay discrepancy was due to differences in revenue originally. It seems like it is a lot more complicated. If women were paid more than men, the complaint would seem to be more about pay structure differences--the women negotiated a high base salary with smaller bonuses for wins while the men negotiated zero base salary with heavy reliance on bonuses for wins. Presumably, the woman might have earned more if they had the men's pay schedule since they have had a better win record in recent years, but that seems to be a problem with the compensation package the union for the women's team negotiated. It also seems a lot like a coulda' shoulda' woulda' to complain about compensation mix after proving yourselves to have a more winning record. 

Ms. Levinson said the federation’s numbers “inappropriately include the NWSL salaries of the players to inflate the women’s players compensation. Any apples to apples comparison shows that the men earn far more than the women.”

Uhmm....seriously? The representative for the women soccer players think's it's inappropriate to include the player's salaries when comparing compensation? This is starting to look like a complete B.S. setup job by women players trying to assert sexism in order to negotiate more pay. Of course this is the first we have heard from the league in response to this issue, so there could be more to this than I am aware.  But if the response from the women players is to complain how unfair it is to include their base salary when comparing compensation figures, then what little I cared about this issue has gone to "couldn't care less" about it. 

Wouldn't it be funny if all the complaints resulted in the men's union suing the league to get the same comp package the women's team gets  I mean, according to league figures, gross income for men's team is twice that for the women's team (presumably including not just ticket sales but advertising and other revenues) . Why should it be fair for men to receive no base salary? Of course, I think the men negotiated their own compensation package and should live with it until it's time to renegotiate, but the league did a pretty good job laying out the case for wage discrimination against the men.