Sell more tickets - debateable. The US women play way more friendlies with ticket prices, if I am not wrong, being way cheaper than Men's friendlies. The men also play a lot of their friendlies abroad for obvious reasons.
Higher ratings - again the women don't get consistently higher ratings. The highest rated game is on the women's side because it was a final.
You cannot discount the money brought in from international tournaments. The centennial copa america is responsible in a huge way for US soccer's surplus. It's not the She Believes cup which brings money and eyeballs.
I think US Soccer should just setup accounting differently for both men's and women's side. That means not bundle their rights and sponsorship together. With transparent and separate accounting, it would be easier to keep track of who brings in more and pass it on accordingly.
What gets lost in this whole "equal pay" thing is that the women would never agree to a "pay-for-play" setup like the men.
But do we think the overall ratings for the women's team don't stay at this level because their frequent friendlies are often against vastly inferior teams that it's not entertaining to watch them play against? Like I acknowledged, the men's team play in many more tournaments with actual value than the women do, but that's a flaw in the overall structure in place for women's soccer as a whole. The whole problem with just chanting "equal pay" is that it simplifies the problem, but that's because a chant has to be quick and catchy. It's not just one thing.
Obviously the reason the women have higher ratings overall is because they actually make it to finals, but that's also why they want more money. Because they made it to the final and won. Back to back. If we're going to use profit as a reason to determine pay then the fact that they make it to the finals -- and thus created higher ratings -- is the central argument for why they deserve
more pay. Would they have consistently higher ratings year round if there were more opportunities to showcase their talent? Genuinely impossible to say.
At the end of the day, people aren't expecting the women to immediately get as much as the men, but the fact remains that the two time women's world cup champions get (considerably) less than teams that leave in the first group stage of the men's tournament without a single win. People can talk all they want about the value there, but are we really thinking the ratings for those teams were so through the roof that they turn a higher profit than the US women? Obviously you can't start making arguments based purely on ratings because there are clear population differences, but I think it's fundamental at this point to understand that the pay argument isn't just on behalf of individual players or even a single country, but investment in women's soccer as a whole. If they're going to keep progressing, worldwide, then there has to be investment made to continue to raise the overall standard, which will only increase potential profit.
The ratings are going up in most other countries every tournament, though this obviously somewhat dependent on timezones. England had a roughly 50% viewership for the semi-final against the US. The interest (or potential for it) is there and only growing, but FIFA is reluctant to invest when investment is literally the only way they can continue to drive further profits.
It's not just the US that's the concern, though obviously it's central to the discussion because the pay disparity and outcome comparisons between the men and women is striking. But if you look at the Netherlands only very recently investing in their women's program and seeing such a marked improvement as a result, you have to think that will start to provide a financial benefit in return. Increased interest means increased profit.
Men's soccer isn't innately more interesting, especially not to Americans, but the structures in place to support and present it are vastly superior. It's not just that the men get paid more or frequently have access to better facilities. The entire structure in place benefits them more, yet the women are succeeding despite this. Imagine if they -- and again, this is more of a global they that refers to many women's national teams -- had better resources.
