U.S. Women's Soccer Salary Discrimination Suit

In March of this year, members of the US Women's Soccer team filed a lawsuit alleging that women's soccer team are being discriminated against in terms of their salary.   The legal definition of gender discrimination is different from the economic definition.  In economics, we think about how salaries are determined based on two concepts:  production and revenue.  Let's take each in turn.  There is no debate that the US Soccer women's team is more productive than the US Soccer men's team.  US Soccer women's team has been one of the premier teams in international play, with the women's team winning the 2015 World Cup.  The second is revenue and until recently, not much was publicly know regarding revenue.  Now that has changed; ticket sales revenue between the two programs has been very similar, with the women's program now generating more ticket sales revenue than the men's program.   So economically, since the women's program is superior in performance and now slightly better in terms of revenue, then the women's players should be paid more than the men's player's in a competitive market.  

US Soccer denied gender discrimination.  US Soccer stated, "that no pay comparison can be made between the women’s players, who are paid in guaranteed salaries and benefits, and men’s players, who are paid in appearance fees." 

Ok, so the two groups are paid differently and that difference is their argument as to why the salaries are different.  I can understand that different salary structures yield different salaries, but it is unclear as to why the men's program and the women's program have different salary structures.  It could be that the men's players have a substantial substitute salary options as compared to women's players; and as such the women's players chose the guaranteed salaries option as opposed to the appearance fee option chosen by the men's players. 

What is going to happen?  Who knows.  While I am not a lawyer, I think the women's lawsuit has an uphill battle, since their salaries are based on a collective bargaining agreement.