U.S. Soccer, FIFA lose antitrust appeal; defense shows short-sighted strategy to develop soccer in America

Cristiano Ronaldo plays for Real Madrid against Barcelona in 2011.
Jan S0L0 via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0

U.S. Soccer and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) will have to defend an antitrust action in federal court for refusing to permit a Spanish La Liga match on U.S. soil, the Second Circuit ruled in March. 

In 2017, world famous football (soccer) clubs Real Madrid and Barcelona faced off in an exhibition game in Miami. The match was fabulously lucrative for the commercial interests behind it, including organizer Relevant Sports, LLC, based in New York.

World sport likes the United States, because our infrastructure practically prints money. Americans, especially the top echelons of the wealthy, have been habitualized by our unregulated and often subsidized sport-and-entertainment monopolists to pay more than people elsewhere in the world to see live events, both directly for seats and indirectly in media rights.

Incidentally, that's the principal reason that bringing the FIFA (men's) World Cup back to North America in 2026 was not really a hard sell, notwithstanding modest public enthusiasm and the theater of the global bidding process. The 2026 co-hosts, the United States, Canada, and Mexico, likely did not even have to pay the half-billion dollars that Qatar apparently spent, mostly to FIFA executive committee members, in, uh, let's say, "incentives," in siting the 2022 World Cup (about my World-Cup-2022-contemporaneous lecture; Qatar on this blog): check out the investigative exclusive by Armin Rosen for Tablet (link from inset), published late last month, using U.S. court records in collateral matters.

Understandably, then, Relevant Sports wanted to maintain the momentum of the 2017 exhibition match. The company proposed that the Spanish La Liga subsequently might site a regular-season, full-stakes match in the United States. 

However, FIFA rules say that a match cannot be held in a country foreign to both sides without the approval of the football federation in the host country. U.S. Soccer said no.

Relevant sued, alleging that the rule improperly protects domestic football from being overshadowed, and therefore diminished in interest and income, by high-profile competitors. U.S. Soccer and FIFA defend the system on the merits under antitrust law, and, saliently in this intermediate disposition, argued that the FIFA "rule" is not really a rule, because FIFA doesn't make the decision for U.S. Soccer or La Liga. They're free to make their own decisions, notwithstanding potential adverse consequences, such as exclusion from international competition for players, teams, or federations that don't play ball.

The instant Second Circuit decision is limited. The court remanded the antitrust claim to proceed, recognizing that FIFA's rule is rule enough to represent the kind of concerted action in violation of antitrust law that Relevant alleges.

Earlier this week, I wrote about Cory Doctorow's enthusiasm, which I share, for the federal government's antitrust agenda—including the Justice Department investigation of Google. (I canceled my Google Nest Aware subscription upon the 25% rate hike. Google's not the only game in town. Yet.) U.S. Soccer's loss in the Second Circuit represents a judicial step in the same right direction.

I'm not an antitrust expert. But to my relatively lay eyes, the fact that the federal district court dismissed the case in 2021 on the faint theory that U.S. Soccer was not formally bound by FIFA's command demonstrates how appallingly far U.S. antitrust law has strayed from basic fair-market principles. Or maybe the court just didn't understand the governance system in world sport and its facility for subverting the laws of nations.

USWNT celebrates in times happier than this year's World Cup.
rachael.c.king via Flickr CC BY 2.0

The U.S. Soccer position in the litigation to me demonstrates furthermore a fundamental misunderstanding of what it will take to make football successful in America. American soccer advocates often wonder aloud why the sport seems to stall again and again, even after the men's World Cup in the United States in 1994 and the astonishing run of the U.S. Women's team in an unprecedented four World Cup titles.

To be sure, there are many, many reasons for the frustrating cycle of revving and stalling. But equally surely, one of those many reasons is the short-term greed of commercial actors that works a detriment to long-term development. 

I've written previously about this problem in the context of media rights. When NBC acquired the rights to English Premier League football, the broadcaster divvied up matches among its many media properties based on the popular appeal of each. NBC's strategy was to leverage interest in the league to sell separate subscriptions to multiple services: NBC, NBC Sports, (at one time, "NBC Gold,") Peacock, USA, Telemundo, Universo.

The network either didn't consider or doesn't care what that model looks like from the customer's perspective. Football in a place such as its home U.K. (at least before U.K. media companies such as Sky started merging with U.S. media giants and took sport away from the publicly minded BBC; that's another story) maintains a multi-generational foothold because supporters follow their teams.  

Divvying up the matches makes it impossible in the United States for a viewer to follow a team. Each week, one gets whatever match a selected service happens to carry, based on its level of market appeal.  If you subscribe to a middle-tier service and your team starts to lose, you might get more matches. If your team starts winning, and you start becoming more engaged, you find yourself suddenly deprived of matches.

That market behavior doesn't build a fan base. For American football or basketball, maybe there are enough viewers who will watch any game because they love the sport. But Americans don't yet love soccer that much. Sport-market development requires fostering two interrelated conditions at the same time: public enthusiasm for the sport, and public enthusiasm for a team. Neither can thrive without the other.

U.S. Soccer's refusal to permit La Liga to play a match on U.S. soil also is self-defeating, if for the converse strategic blindness. Both media rights usurpers and U.S. Soccer, focused on short-term profits, are dampening American enthusiasm by impeding U.S. viewers' access to the highest level of play in the world, in the Premier League and La Liga. While NBC's strategy deprives Americans of the opportunity to root for a team, the U.S. Soccer strategy deprives Americans of the opportunity to root for the sport.

Again, neither can thrive without the other.  U.S. Soccer is trying to protect Major League Soccer and the federation's underage and lower divisions. The federation reasons coldly that someone who buys a $500 La Liga ticket will skip five or ten $48 Tampa Bay Mutiny matches.

They're wrong. One of my U.S.-based family is a card-carrying member of the Toon Army, a dedicated supporter of Newcastle (U.K.) United FC. He traveled domestically to see Newcastle play an exhibition match in the United States this summer. Being a Newcastle supporter has made him a more, not less, enthusiastic supporter of his nearby D.C. United and the U.S. men's and women's national teams. With access to the matches of each, live and on TV, he's more likely to spend money on all of them.

Antitrust law is not a device to make commercial actors prioritize long-term interests over short. To the contrary, if NBC and U.S. Soccer put themselves out of business, that's a healthy outcome for the free market. But if antitrust inadvertently compels U.S. Soccer to up its game and compete for eyeballs by actually developing the sport, rather than constraining consumer choice, then that's an outcome I can get behind.

The case is Relevant Sports, LLC v. U.S. Soccer Federation, Inc. (2d Cir. Mar. 7, 2023). U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond J. Lohier, Jr.., wrote the opinion of the unanimous panel that also comprised Chief Judge Livingston and Judge Lynch. In 2017's "El Clásico Miami," Barcelona bettered Real Madrid 3-2.

Weapon of Putin's war, anti-gay law jars NHL in US

The NHL Chicago Blackhawks Sunday will host an annual Pride Night, but the team will not be wearing warm-up pride jerseys as intended, for fear of jeopardizing the safety of Russian players and their families.

Yesterday I got to talk about the story with Sasha-Ann Simons of Reset on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio. You can hear the segment online. HT @ ace producer Micah Yason.

WBEZ sports contributor Cheryl-Raye Stout related the facts and layered some nuance on the story. She expressed concern that Blackhawks staff had not consulted their three Russian players. In a Philadelphia Flyers case in January, a player refused to wear a pride jersey, citing his Russian Orthodox religion. It's unclear where the Russian Blackhawks stand.

No one disputes, though, that wearing the jerseys might be problematic for the players as a matter of Russian law and policy. In December 2022, Russia doubled down on the 10-year-old anti-gay law that was a source of controversy during the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2018 FIFA men's World Cup.

Under international pressure, Russia was permissive in enforcement of the law during those tournaments. But the failure of the International Olympic Committee and FIFA to reconcile their bold anti-discrimination rhetoric with host-country legal jeopardy for athletes and fans was a bad look and did no favors for human rights. More or less the same drama just played out again with the FIFA World Cup in the fall in Qatar, where homosexual acts are criminalized.

As enacted in 2013, the Russian law imposes civil fines on persons and business, and detention and deportation for foreigners, who engage in "propaganda" promoting same-sex relationships. Propaganda, though, really means any representation of social acceptability, including even the rainbow flag.

The law was enacted as a child protection measure and referred only to expression to children, though that scope encompassed mass media. In 2022, President Putin signed into law an amendment to broaden the law to cover expression to any person, child or adult, and to make plain that trans representations are prohibited, too.

Russian refugees march in New York in 2013.
Bosc d'Anjou via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Thus, a Russian athlete photographed wearing a pride jersey in America might face legal repercussions upon returning home. But the risk is really much greater than just civil fines, I explained to Simons on Reset. Informally, the law has signaled indifference by Russian authorities to brutal violence inflicted on LGBTQ persons, or even persons suspected of being LGBTQ, by vigilantes, if not law enforcement. An athlete abroad fairly might fear such reprisal upon returning home, or fear for her or his family meanwhile.

One thing I did not get to say on Reset, that I think is important, is that Putin's expansion of the anti-gay law is complementary of his war in Ukraine, because he perceives both as integral to preserving Russian identity against Western acculturation. Foreign Policy called the issues two sides of the same coin, and Putin has spoken of Western territorial aggression and social policy in the same breath. Doubling down on the anti-gay law in December was calculated as just another salvo in the war. That means, if Brittney Griner were not warning enough, that Putin is prepared to weaponize the law.

Robbie Rogers, 2013
Noah Salzman via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

Our Reset discussion touched on other related matters, such as the Iranian side's protest at the Qatar World Cup, which I wrote about here in November and spoke about in Poland. I've written previously on the World Cup and sexual equality (with Jose Benavides), the World Cup and human rights, and football and development. 

A paucity of representation in top-flight world sport indicates that laws such as those in Russia and Qatar are hardly the only source of hostility toward LGBTQ athletes. In 2022, in the run-up to the men's World Cup, there was only one openly gay international footballer, and he didn't make the final cut for Australia's squad in Qatar. (There are openly lesbian players in women's world football.)

A good read in this area is Coming Out to Play (2014), an autobiography by Robbie Rogers, co-authored with Eric Marcus. An American and a Christian, Rogers played for Leeds United in the UK and for the U.S. Men's National Team. In 2013, he publicly disclosed that he is gay at the same time he announced his retirement from football, though he returned to the sport to play for four more years with the LA Galaxy in the U.S. MLS.

Politics complicates football: Sympathy for ... Iran

As advertised, last week in Kraków, Poland, I had the great privilege to talk law, development, and the FIFA World Cup, with the group stage under way in Qatar.

Students and faculty of the American Law Scientific Circle (KNPA) and American Law Program at Jagiellonian University (Koło Naukowe Prawa Amerykańskiego TBSP UJ and Szkoła Prawa Amerykańskiego UJ), in collaboration with the Columbus Law School at the Catholic University of America, generously hosted me.  The talk kicked off a KNPA lecture series on "Law and Sustainability." My especial thanks to KNPA President Zuzanna Maszniew and her leadership team.

Photo © Zuzanna Maszniew, used with permission.

I was no John Oliver, to be sure, but I hope I stimulated thinking about the Gordian Knot of sport and politics and its implications for the Middle East and North Africa's place at the table.

Today, November 29, the United States will round out its play in the group stage in Qatar with a match against Iran, simultaneously with a high stakes stand-off between England and Wales. It's a big day, football fans.

Meanwhile, coming home to the States this week, I've been disappointed that Americans are not more in tune with the fascinating stories of geopolitics that are unfolding under the sporting tents of the Qatar World Cup. I admit, what's happening now in China dangles meritorious distraction. But with the USMNT facing Iran today, I want to mention one of the stories from Qatar that has gripped me.

In Iran's opening match with England last week, Iranian footballers refused to sing their own national anthem (BBC).  Stony faced, the players apparently chose to stand in silent solidarity with rights protestors against the government at home (N.Y. Times). Subsequently, Iranian authorities arrested a former national-team footballer known for occasional anti-regime sentiments (Guardian). At Iran's second match, the lads toed the line.

The anthem stunt was extraordinarily courageous. The players had to have known the disgrace they brought on the regime would have consequences when they go home, if not sooner.

Iranian footballers in 2018.
Mahdi Zare/Fars News Agency via Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0

More, though, I was struck by the reminder that people and their governments are not the same thing.

I'm a reasonably bright person, as people go, and I've seen a lot of the world. I come from an immigrant family myself. I grew up with a dear Iranian friend. Her stepmother taught me how to make tahchin, and her dad eagerly gave me his own well worn copy of All the Shah's Men. I shouldn't need to be reminded that people are just people, much the same around the world, just trying to make the best of things and find some joy where we can; and that it's wrong to ascribe the Machiavellian motives of states, whether others or our own, to their citizens. The protests now in China say the same.

Yet, I admit, I had followed the USMNT into the World Cup with something of a Cold War mentality, maybe because of the era when I grew up. Yellow ribbons, burning effigies, and "Death to America" chants all bounce around my long-term memory. I was determined that we and our Group B compatriots from England and Wales should beat Iran to make some kind of political point. A Miracle on Ice or Rocky IV situation.

The Iranian men's demonstration unsettled my unconscious prejudice. As a result, a part of me has been pulling for Iran in their last matches, even while, still, I had to favor the England squad, which features some of my beloved Manchester City stars, and Wales, which invokes Lasso-esque Wrexham affections. And even while, of course, I support my home USMNT today, there will be a part of me that wants to see the Iranian side make a pride-worthy showing.

With FIFA World Cup under way in Qatar, law students study sport and soft power, law and development

I'll be talking law, development, and the World Cup today in Kraków, Poland.

Thanks to the American Law Scientific Circle (KNPA) and American Law Program at Jagiellonian University (Koło Naukowe Prawa Amerykańskiego TBSP UJ and Szkoła Prawa Amerykańskiego UJ), in collaboration with the Columbus Law School at the Catholic University of America, for hosting me. This talk kicks off a KNPA lecture series on "Law and Sustainability" and begins at 3 p.m. CET at Pałac Larischa 203, Bracka 12.

I'll share some of the subject matter later.  Too much football to watch!

Qatar World Cup opens Sunday; meanwhile, Netflix series stokes embers of FIFA corruption scandal

I visited CONMEBOL HQ in Asunción, Paraguay, in October.
The South American angle on the FIFA corruption scandal
was engagingly fictionalized in El Presidente in 2020.
(Photo by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

The sport world is abuzz over the Netflix documentary series, FIFA Uncovered, dropped November 9, just weeks before the FIFA World Cup opener in Qatar.

Many in Qatar are crying foul by filmmaker Miles Coleman for dredging up the ugliness of the FIFA corruption scandal, the focus of this docuseries, right now. But in an interview with renowned MENA scholar James Dorsey, Coleman, who created This Is Football for Amazon Prime in 2019, said he had no motive other than historical documentation. The timing of the release, Coleman said, is to bring football fans up to speed on the facts, so they can have informed conversations around the Qatar World Cup.

FIFA was rocked by scandal in 2015 when investigators led by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) arrested top officials in Zurich and issued an avalanche of indictments. It was revealed then that corruption practically poisoned every part of world football governance, especially the bidding process for the world's top sporting event and its 2010 award to Russia for 2018 and Qatar for 2022.

Qatar narrowly edged out a bid from the United States in 2010, and disgraced FIFA President Sepp Blatter and his allies accused the United States of spite. Purportedly relieved of corrupt process, FIFA in 2018 awarded the 2026 World Cup to the joint bid of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

When issues remain controverted, the docuseries presents all voices, Coleman told Dorsey. Indeed, the interviews are what makes the series worthwhile. Most of the story has been told already and well; I read and reviewed a number of books on the subject in the first pandemic summer. The docuseries, though, includes interviews with just about every key player, including Blatter himself, as well as Qatar bid chief H.E. Hassan Al Thawadi; "Qatar whistleblower" Phaedra Al-Majid, featured recently on Norwegian television; and Mary Lynn Blanks, romantic partner of corrupted American football official Chuck Blazer, who died in 2017.

Among the revelations, or at least confirmed suspicions, arising from the docuseries interviews is the fact, borne out by evidence besides his own testimony, that Blatter favored the United States rather than Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup. For all Blatter's failings, he was outmaneuvered by the colossal corruption machine that he helped to create. African Football Confederation President Issa Hayatou, a rival of Blatter's within FIFA, was key to securing the Qatari win. Hayatou was joined in his efforts by Jack Warner, president of the North, Central America and Caribbean Association, whose defection infuriated Blazer.

On Wednesday next week, November 23, at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, I will lead a discussion, "Law, Development, and the World Cup."  The program, in English, begins at 3 p.m. local time at Pałac Larischa 203, Bracka 12.

The World Cup opens Sunday night in Doha, Nov. 20, at 1100 US EST/1600 GMT, when Qatar hosts Ecuador in Group A. The United States MNT plays its Group B opener against Wales on Monday, Nov. 21, at 1400 US EST/1900 GMT. Poland plays its Group C opener against Mexico on Tuesday, Nov. 22, at 1100 US EST/1600 GMT/1700 CET.

Hat tip to Alessandro Balbo Forero, an alum of my Comparative Law class who wrote his final paper on football and Brexit, for alerting me to the drop of FIFA Uncovered. He's an Arsenal supporter, but nobody's perfect.

Here is the trailer for FIFA Uncovered:

And here is the Dorsey interview of Coleman:

Qatar drops beIN sport piracy claim as World Cup nears

Sideline interview with beIN
(Ronnie Macdonald CC BY 2.0 via Flickr)

Qatar withdrew its complaint in April in the World Trade Organization against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) over piracy of Qatari beIN Media Group sport broadcasts.

I wrote about this dispute in May 2020. A pirate outfit cheekily called "beOutQ" was rebroadcasting beIN content in the KSA without a copyright license. Riyadh disclaimed responsibility. But there was little doubt that the Saudis at least looked the other way, if not sponsored the piracy, as the two nations were locked in a tense diplomatic standoff and Qatar was isolated by a regional embargo. Read more background from James Dorsey.

Now World Cup 2022 in Qatar is focusing global attention on the Middle East. Neither nation stands to gain from negative publicity, least of all heightened attention to human rights issues (see Dorsey this week), so Qatar and the KSA are trying to work past their differences. They both joined a statement of the Gulf Cooperation Council signed at al-Ula after a summit in January 2021 (Middle East Institute analysis), and they have been working through the implications since. BeIN has broadcast rights to the World Cup, so setting to rest that piece of the dispute made the agenda.

Alyssa Aquino wrote further analysis of the Qatari withdrawal of the WTO complaint for Law 360 in April. The matter in the WTO was No. WT/DS567/11 (terminated Apr. 25, 2022).

UK football letter roils world sport, and real world, too

Letter posted on Twitter by the AP's Rob Harris

The English Premier League football (soccer) organization wrote to the U.S. Trade Representative in February urging that the United States put the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on the "Priority Watch List" of countries that fail to protect intellectual property (IP) rights.

The letter has been widely reported beyond the football world for its potential implications in foreign affairs.  Where the United States is concerned, IP piracy is regarded as a critical contemporary problem, on par with national security.  Much of that regard is warranted, as countries such as China, at least historically, have been linked to IP theft as a means to unfair economic advantage, to the detriment of American enterprise.  Some of the sentiment derives from the capture of Washington by IP-wealthy corporations, to the detriment of intellectual freedom.  Regardless, the gross result has been a paper war with nations that countenance IP piracy.  To put Saudi Arabia in those U.S. crosshairs adds a layer of complexity to our already impossibly complicated love-hate relationship with the KSA—read more from James Dorsey just last week—with ramifications from Yemen to Israel.

The letter has potential ramifications within the Middle East, too.  The Premier League's indictment calls out specifically a Saudi-based pirate football broadcaster that calls itself "beout Q" and seems to operate in a blind spot of Saudi criminal justice, even distributing set-top boxes and selling subscriptions in Saudi retail outlets.  The name seems to be a thumb in the nose of beIN Sports, a Doha-based, Qatari-owned media outlet with lawful licensing rights to many Premier League and other international sporting matches.  Saudi Arabia has led the blockade of Qatar since the 2017 Middle East diplomatic crisis, a high note of previously existing and still enduring tensions between the premier political, economic, and cultural rivals in the region.

A 2016 Amnesty International report
was not flattering to Qatar or FIFA.

Football and international sport are weapons in this rivalry.  Qatar has long capitalized on sport as a means to the end of soft international power, winning the big prize of the men's football World Cup in 2022, if by hook or by crook.  Saudi Arabia has more lately taken to the idea of "sportwashing" its image, especially since the Jamal Khashoggi assassination and amid the ceaseless civil war in Yemen.

The letter roiled the world of football no less, as Saudi Arabia has been in negotiation to acquire the Newcastle United Football Club.  That purchase requires Premier League approval.  So everyone and her hooligan brother has an opinion about what it means that the league is so worked up about Saudi IP piracy as to write to the United States for help.

This unusual little letter is a reminder of a theme, known to social science and as old as the Ancient Olympics, that, more than mere diversion, sport is a reflection of our world.

U.S. female footballers suffer slide tackle in equal pay match: Understanding the summary judgment decision

U.S. co-captain Alex Morgan is the first named plaintiff.
(Photo by Jamie Smed CC BY 2.0.)

The women of U.S. Soccer suffered a major setback Friday with an adverse court decision (e.g., N.Y. Times).

The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles awarded partial summary judgment to defendant U.S. Soccer, rejecting the plaintiffs' core claim in the case, pay discrimination against the U.S. women's national team (USWNT) relative to the men's national team (USMNT).   In the complaint filed in March 2019, USWNT players claimed violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, as amended by the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended.

The USWNT always faced an uphill battle on the numbers.  To generalize, the women could not deny, they were paid more than the men, dollar to dollar.  The devil lies in what "more" is.

The USWNT has been fantastically successful.  The team has won the World Cup of women's soccer four times, most recently in 2019 in France (I saw a match from a Paris Fan Zone, and my daughter went to one) and won the Olympic gold four times.  The squad has been a global force to be reckoned with since its inception in the 1980s.  Moreover, many a football fan, such as myself, will tell you that the women's talent is a marvel to behold on the pitch, the United States having substantially defined the women's game for the world.

We were in France for World Cup 2019. (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

Direct comparison between women's and men's play is inevitably uneven, because the style of play in the women's game is different from in the men's, apples and oranges.  And worldwide, many soccer-power nations have failed to invest in developing female talent, so any given head-to-head is not necessarily taking place on a level playing field.  Nevertheless, by many a worthwhile measure, including technical proficiency, the women indisputably are better than the men—who failed even to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia.

The women's superiority was exactly their problem in the equal-pay litigation.  A plaintiff bears the burden of making out a prime facie case of pay disparity.  Compensation in professional soccer in the United States is mostly based on the principle of pay for performance.  The women played more than the men and achieved more than the men, so they were paid more.  Their burden, then, was to show, in essence, that their pay rate was relatively lower than the men's.

We win, 2019.  (Photo by Howcheng CC BY-SA 4.0.)

U.S. civil rights law is, thankfully, sufficiently sophisticated to account for disparity based on pay rate.  As U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner explained in the instant case, quoting precedent, it can't be that "an employer who pays a woman $10 per hour and a man $20 per hour would not violate the EPA ... as long as the woman negated the obvious disparity by working twice as many hours."  However, the parties disagreed about how to calculate rate so as to compare apples to apples.

Hardening defenses on their polar positions, each side posited a favorable calculation.  Plaintiffs urged the court to look at women's compensation through the lens of the men's contract.  If the women had won the World Cup, etc., under the men's contract, they would have been far more richly rewarded.  Defendant U.S. Soccer urged the court to look at the numbers in gross.  The women simply make more than the men, and even though the women play more matches, they make more than the men on a per match basis, too.

Both positions are counterarguable.  The women's and men's contracts are both the result of collective bargaining, and a lot goes into a bargaining contract besides its raw numbers.  Simply pumping the women's performance statistics through the men's contract formula ignores the broader context of each contract, or collective bargaining agreement (CBA), and the inter-dependency of its compensation formula with other bargained-for terms: like squeezing an apple with an orange juicer.

New York ticker-tape parade for the USWNT, 2015

(Photo by Anthony Quintano CC BY 2.0)

At the same time, the women's argument in converse challenges the defendant's attempt to aggregate numbers.  Maybe the women are paid more per match because they are better soccer players, which the evidence supports.  That doesn't mean that they are paid so much more per match relative to the disparity in talent and achievement between the women and the men.  To analogize, oranges might cost more than apples because oranges taste twice as good.  But an orange for $1.20 is still a bargain relative to an apple for a dollar.

The court's recitation of the women's collective bargaining process is painstaking, packing in plenty of detail for those who want it.  In sum, considering that the plaintiffs bear the burden to make out a prima facie case of discrimination, the court found the defendant's position more persuasive.  The contractual context was really the clincher.  Judge Klausner wrote (footnotes omitted):

This history of negotiations between the parties demonstrates that the WNT rejected an offer to be paid under the same pay-to-play structure as the MNT, and that the WNT was willing to forgo higher bonuses for other benefits, such as greater base compensation and the guarantee of a higher number of contracted players. Accordingly, Plaintiffs cannot now retroactively deem their CBA worse than the MNT CBA by reference to what they would have made had they been paid under the MNT's pay-to-play structure when they themselves rejected such a structure. This method of comparison not only fails to account for the choices made during collective bargaining, it also ignores the economic value of the "insurance" that WNT players receive under their CBA. 

[¶] One of the defining features of the WNT CBA is its guarantee that players will be compensated regardless of whether they play a match or not. This stands in stark contrast to the MNT CBA, under which players are only compensated if they are called into camp to play and then participate in a match. ... [T]here is indisputably economic value to this type of "fixed pay" contract, as compared to a "performance pay" contract.  Merely comparing what WNT players received under their own CBA with what they would have received under the MNT CBA discounts the value that the team placed on the guaranteed benefits they receive under their agreement, which they opted for at the expense of higher performance-based bonuses.

There are problems with the court's approach, including prominently that there are systemically discriminatory reasons that the women elected for the terms they did.  Many male players are able to make a living as athletes, so playing for the national team is a bonus.  Women's soccer meanwhile has faltered as a nationwide business model, for arguable reasons that must include the ingrained underdevelopment of women's athletics.  That makes it harder for a woman than for a man to play at the national level, even if the two squads have the same number of seats.

USWNT selfie with the President, 2015 (White House photo)

Consider that a man who plays professional soccer is incidentally training for the U.S. national team while he's at work.  And his day job gives him time off, sometimes months, to play for the national team.  A woman with a collateral occupation that is not professional soccer cannot invest the time and energy in the physical training and playing time required to be a globally competitive athlete.  Of course, some women do find work in professional soccer, but far fewer than men who do.  Characteristically, the USWNT's star players bargained for better job security not just for themselves, but to support their teammates.  And that's not all selflessness; their investment in part explains the ongoing developmental success of the USWNT over athletic generations.

That doesn't mean Klausner is wrong on the law.  The facts of the case show something we already know, which is that historically rooted discrimination can persist well beyond demonstrable intention, is exceptionally resistant to eradication, and is more susceptible to redress socially and politically than judicially.  There are good reasons why the standard to establish a civil rights violation of federal law is high.  Failure to surmount that bar in court does not establish that the plaintiff is right or wrong as a social or moral matter.

Federal courthouse in Los Angeles (Photo by Los Angeles CC BY-SA 3.0)

There were other claims in the case, and the plaintiffs' cause is not formally over, even notwithstanding appeal.  The court's treatment of the plaintiffs' claim of discrimination in turf is a worthwhile read.  Female footballers often play on artificial and unstable surfaces, resulting in physical injury and career wear and tear, while the USMNT always plays on grass.  Despite the disparity in fact, the plaintiffs were unable to prove the discriminatory motive, or intent, that civil rights law requires.

The women's case persists upon some ancillary claims related to fringe benefits, such as better hotels and more frequent charter flights for the men's team than for the women's.  There might not be enough there for the women to want to keep the litigation going.  Plaintiffs probably will ask Judge Klausner to allow interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit directly from this partial summary judgment, and I expect he will.

The case is Morgan v. U.S. Soccer Federation, No. 2:19-cv-01717 (C.D. Cal. May 1, 2020).  Court Listener has the key documents.

“A Fair Shake for the Sheikh,” or “Cut Qatar Some Slack”: On World Cup 2022

My photo at a Qatar Stars League double header in March 2016: Empty stands tell the tale of native public interest in football.  However, Prof. Susan Dun reported that populous foreign laborers do pack matches for the leagues they follow: another piece of the untold story in Qatar.

I was just in Oxford, UK, for “Sport 5.”  (The full name of the conference, sponsored by Inter-Disciplinary.Net, is in the previous post about my contribution there.)  I tweeted some of the highlights of Sport 5 (link to Twitter from the ribbon atop this page, Sept. 13-15, 2016).  I want to share a bit more about one paper at Sport 5 that stood out for its unconventional thesis.  The paper came from this year’s conference coordinator, Professor Susan Dun, a communication scholar at Northwestern University in Qatar.

I don’t want to steal Dun’s thunder or evidence, so I’ll give only cursory treatment to her thesis and outline three rationales that I found persuasive.  My own impressions have mixed with recollection, so blame me for any misstatements.

In essence, Dun posited that however much Qatar deserves condemnation for corrupt dealings with FIFA (see generally Blake & Calvert’s The Ugly Game), the ills of the kafala labor system, or dreams of air-conditioned desert stadiums, the regime is not getting a fully fair shake in global perception.  She made a compelling case, and activists, journalists, and scholars investigating the social and economic implications of the upcoming World Cups in Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022—myself included—should take note.

First, Dun placed the Qatari bid for 2022 in the context of Qatar’s ambitious struggle for political legitimacy through soft-power sport.  In its rush onto the world stage, Qatar was not ready for intense scrutiny and scathing criticism that accompanied the award (and then was amplified by the FIFA corruption fiasco, pointed out David Storey of the University of Worcester, who, by the way, presented a fascinating paper on the GAA).  Within Qatar, criticism of Al Thani leadership is not just legally problematic, but socially taboo.  So Qataris were utterly ill equipped to respond to an external public relations crisis in a way that would have seemed natural to Western observers—with press conferences, collaborative inquiries, and affirmative information dissemination.  Instead Qatar took an outmoded defend-or-deny stance, which only bloodied the waters.

Second, Dun explained that Qatar actually implemented a great many reforms to redress exposed deficiencies, for example, illegalizing passport retention and improving living conditions for foreign laborers.  The communications failure has meant that reform stories have not gotten much play.  Meanwhile, reform has been slowed by understandable challenges.  Employers might still seize passports.  Wrangling the middlemen is a laborious process in part because rapidly developed Qatar lacks regulatory and enforcement mechanisms that Westerners take for granted in key areas, such as workplace safety and banking.  Communications failure again means that these impediments are not explained.  Reform is necessarily incremental, but unresolved problems on the ground are misconstrued to signal government indifference, if not malice.

Third, Dun documented a media affection for criticism of Qatar.  In part the penchant seems driven by ignorance.  Journalists, bloggers, et al., tend not to be familiar with Qatar, so are more likely to republish judgmental commentary without critical analysis for fairness and accuracy.  I suspect that hostility toward a wealthy Islamic state in the post-9/11 era also plays a role.  Again, communications failure exaggerates the problem.  Dun gave evidence that even Russia is more likely than Qatar to get a fair shake in media coverage.  I can attest that in my own research, I only recently read about changes in Russian labor law—allegations not unlike those that have plagued Qatar for years—to hasten World Cup infrastructure development at the expense of worker rights.  (See Martin Müller, How Mega-Events Capture Their Hosts: Event Seizure and the World Cup 2018 in Russia, Urban Geography, 2015, doi).

Dun got push-back in discussion with Sport 5 attendees, but she held firm.  To be clear, Dun makes no motion whatever to justify human rights abuses; quite the contrary.  She simply laments that the whole story of Qatar's reform is not being told.  It would be a mistake to pull the World Cup from Qatar, she says, because there are desirable reforms occurring that should not be undermined.  (This is happily consistent with Benavides and my extension in World Cup Dreaming of Jeremiah Ho's incrementalist theory).  She makes that case well enough that those of us who fancy ourselves objective observers should pay attention.