Football is not a charity, it is a massive business machine!!

With the ongoing Women’s World Cup doing great as we all hoped for (and England are very likely to win the final tomorrow! yippee!!), many have been discussing the matter of gender pay gap and asking for equality in female & female pay at the World Cup. Unfortunately, this is one of those instances where people fail to do their homework

Last year’s men’s World Cup generated $7.5billion in revenue and cost the organisers $1.1billion to organise it. The men (footballers) were paid circa 6% of the revenue. England’s men donate all their earnings from the World Cup to charity.

The ongoing women’s World Cup has generated $570million in revenue and cost the organisers $510million to organise it. The women (footballers) are to be paid circa 15% of the revenue.

Let us say FIFA were to set an equal percentage of revenue generated as payment to both men & women (in the name of equality), and say that is 6%, the women will not be able to cover the cost of their jerseys.

FIFA do not have some other means of earning revenue to pay players outside of what the product generates…..

If both men & women football events generate the same revenue and men get paid higher, then that would be a travesty

It’s the bonus paid by the respective football associations that should indeed be exactly the same for men & women and should be based on how far you progress at each tournament, meaning the England women making it to the final (and indeed, if they win) must be offering a higher bonus than what was paid to our men, who haven’t made it this far in a while. No revenge generation explanation for that..

And in essence, if we say it’s all about economics and some common sense (and not another attempt to put women in their place!), then, is it possible for women’s football to generate $7.5billion at their World Cup? Men say that will be 30, 40 years from now as it took men that long to get there. Well, the answer is NO! With social media and all the technology advancement today, and assuming roughly half the world have female kids etc., it will not take that long, if the right steps are taken, to get the women’s game to become a mega-money business! This should never be a matter of men versus women. It is business, it is economics. In the construction sector you often hear of resource shortages, but hey, women cannot thrive in construction. Why? because we use some macho, unacceptable aggression to freeze them out. There are thousands of roles and job positions in construction that doesn’t require male muscles carrying blocks and bricks up a ladder: we now have equipment for that! The training, skill and expertise needed to operate those equipment can be readily mastered by both men & women, if we create a conducive environment for all! It is that simple! Women’s football is not at the same pace and style as men’s (and as many have been pointing out, teams of 15 year old boys have been trouncing the elite senior women’s team when they played), but it is a product and one that is enjoyable to watch for so many, and as such, it can be made commercially viable

Behind the men’s game with its billions, you’ll find women who took these big name footballers to weekend camps and training as boys, so, the men’s game was not some total male product that men sorted!