I drove past a local park yesterday and saw construction crews pouring a concrete pad. I checked online to see what they were doing.
They are installing new pickleball courts.
A couple stories down the webpage, they had news another new project, installing a soccer goal in a park, that they proudly stated was made from scratch by one of their employees to save money.
LOL…For pickeball they build brand new stuff. For soccer, they put a random, homemade goal in a field to save money.
For my tastes, this song is played exactly the right amount on radio stations. When I hear it, I don’t change the channel. But, I also never seek it out.
Guest Ben Fast and host John Pranjic have a great discussion about the nature true competition that is lacking in soccer in the U.S. and the role of governance in this 3Four3 podcast.
It would make Austrian and George Mason University economists proud.
The last few weeks we’ve heard a lot of comparisons of the pay and money brought in by the Women’s World Cup and the Men’s World Cup.
But, there’s no mention on how the $130 million brought in by the Women’s World Cup compares to other women sporting events.
I can’t think of any that could come close to that.
Major tennis tournaments and the Olympics probably come close if you break out the female sporting events, but that’s tough to do.
My guess is the Women’s World Cup is the most valuable female-only sporting event and it continues to grow, which are good signs that don’t seem to get noticed.
I’m a fan of women’s soccer. I think they deserve as much as they can get.
But, I think many pin the unequal pay blame on the wrong folks.
The 2018 World Cup (men’s version) brought in about $5 billion.
The 2019 World Cup (women’s version) is expected to bring in about $130 million.
This easy to find fact doesn’t get much coverage.
If it did, a good reporter might recognize that the pay gap primarily originates from how much broadcasters are willing to pay to secure the rights to carry the respective tournaments and ask network executives why they spend less on rights to the Women’s tournament.
Of course, the answer would be that they make less in advertising off of that programming.
That same reporter could then ask the marketing execs at the tournament’s advertisers why they spend less.
Nike would be a good place to start.
They produced an inspiring commercial to cap off the World Cup. But, nobody asked them how what they spent in 2019 compares to what they spent in 2018.
Perhaps they spent the same.
If not, they get a lot of credit for bringing attention to the pay gap while avoiding blame for contributing to it.
Our Dinner Table 