Compare to men's soccer then. Quick google search (correct my numbers if off)...average MLS salary is $600k. Average premier league salary is £8.2 million.
The money to pay players comes from ticket sales (attendance) and the leagues ability to sell the product to TV media companies which use the games to sell advertising in the form of commercials.
My answer for the first part is...it's always about the money.
I know a few girls playing pro in Spain, England and Mexico and doing very well and are very happy. Life is not all about money. Life should be explored. They are having fun, making a good living, have zero debt and traveling around the world for free and learning about other cultures. I also know a few girls that went to college, got a degree and are working at Starbucks. One became a store manager and is very happy and just got married.
Lots of when/ifs. Maybe at some point in the next few decades more female soccer players (not just the very best) will get paid well. One can hope.
We should have a top league in SoCal that is ONLY about soccer.
Completely agree. There's more to life than making money.
You bring up a good point. And Carlsbad alluded to this too. I've been focusing on the demand side, but let's look at the supply side. For those who are calling for an women's academy system in the US, what incentive does an organization have to build one right now?
In other countries, the youth teams are all a part of the Pro teams and it's free. The rest of the kids play for fun in rec. California should have it's own league. Not sure how, but the demand is there. Taking a really good player who has played youth club soccer from U7-U14, dedicating her life and body to a sport she loves and then being asked by her dopy coach driving a BMW asking, "where do you want to play in college" and then the player says, "I'm not sure I want to go to college" and then asshole says, "why are you even here" is insane and wrong. 14 years old. Player went to the bench after that comment. Her old man forked out $3,000 (It's more now) to play soccer, not get recruited as a 14-year-old.
Even on the men's side you've got teams skipping their turn when it comes to the draft. That's embarrassing.
Avg for MLS or EPL is a bit of a distorted stat. The min salary in the MLS is $85K. It's likely that the most common salary is closer to that than $600K given the designated players distorting the numbers.
This is right. Grok seems to think it's between $80-100K. The math throws off the average, because most players on a roster are senior roster players (at about $100K) or reserve players (at $80K). Each team can carry 3-4 designated players which earn the big bucks but throw off the average. Then there are the middle players who are either part of the U22 initiative at about $150K (to keep homegrown talent in the league) and TAM (additional money the MLS can throw at senior roster players and the money of which can be traded to other teams). The reason why is to keep parity and to keep the league from spiraling costs, each team operates under an overall salary cap. The DPs (partial count), U22 (partial count), reserve and also homegrown/generation addidas players don't count towards the cap. TAM and senior does.
On the girls side, there was an academy system attempt called DA. US soccer screwed it up monumentally….all the clubs went back to ECNL after 2 years of DA. The DA idea was right, but the support from US Soccer was inept.
For boys DA became MLS Next which is basically the same thing but controlled by MLS. DA and now MLSN have remained the top tier for boys youth soccer. This makes sense because theres more willingness to pay top players to play the sport. ECNL people like to say that without Acadamies MLSN wouldn't be that good. But, that's kind of the point. All clubs and playrs in the MLSN ecosystem are feeders for Academy teams.
The GDA was a scam and a big fat lie. "The world is watching" we were told & sold. Complete chaos, cheating, confusion, division, dumpster fire, lying, insane pay for play and kickbacks. Rich daddy and mommy got all close to the Docs and won most of the prizes. I still remember being told the "scouts" will only watch the girls from the GDA and this is the pathway to Pro and WNT. Then, when the girls went to NC to play in freezing temperatures in 2018, 100+ college coaches came to watch. Those were the scouts. I knew then it was all about college, not a pathway to pro.
I wonder how many then go to college knowing they gave their dream 110% first?
The GDA failed because they lied and played favoritism when those with the money, parents!!! Karma took them out!!!
