U.S. Women’s Soccer has been fighting a very public battle for pay parity for years.
World Cup Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist Hope Solo joined Cheddar for a special #chedHER day of programming to discuss how the wide gap has affected her life.
“Even being among the best soccer players in the world, I wasn’t making a good enough living,” she told Cheddar in an interview. “I had to supplement my income by doing appearances, by doing photo shoots, oftentimes having my former agent try to convince me to do things like Playboy.”
Solo and her teammates filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Soccer Federation back in 2016 to protest the disparities between men’s and women’s salaries in the sport.
The men, who failed to qualify for this year’s World Cup after a stunning loss to Trinidad and Tobago in 2017, have not had much luck at the biggest events.
But they reportedly get paid four times as much as their female counterparts, who incidentally have brought home three World Cups and four Olympic Golds.
Part of the reason, Solo says, is broad pay inequity that plagues so many industries. But it also has to do with how the athletes are portrayed in the media.
“We sexualize female athletes,” she told Cheddar. “Before every Olympic Game, many different media come out with a list of the sexiest female athletes. If you scroll down on any article, maybe about me, you’ll see at the very bottom, women on Sports Illustrated covers.”
The women’s team reached an agreement with the sport’s governing body last year, but it stopped short of mandating equal pay for both teams.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/hope-solo-on-closing-the-gender-pay-gap-in-sports).
Former NFL QB Lester Ricard Jr. joins Cheddar Bets to discuss playing--and beating--the same team three times in a season ahead of the NFC Championship Game.
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Brian Bennett, College Basketball Senior Editor of The Athletic, joins Cheddar Bets to share his methods for forecasting long-term success for college basketball's top programs.
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Super Group, the company behind leading global online sports betting and gaming businesses Betway and Spin, has landed on Wall Street. The company went public via SPAC with Sports Entertainment Acquisition Corp., and now lists on the NYSE under the ticker symbol 'SGHC.' This debut comes as the U.S. sports betting market continues to heat up with more and more states legalizing the practice. Eric Grubman, chairman of Super Group, joined Cheddar to discuss.
Olivia Harlan Dekker and Sean Green provide their insight and top picks after studying the early lines for Super Bowl LIV, while Chris Spagnuolo breaks down betting trends from this NFL season using data and analytics. Sponsored by BetMGM.
Eight months after the National Football League announced $1 million in research into cannabinoids, the NFL-NFLPA Joint Pain Management Committee has awarded the funding to two teams of medical researchers at the University of California San Diego and the University of Regina. The NFL says the studies will investigate the effects of cannabinoids on pain management and neuroprotection from concussion in elite football players, respectively. Cheddar correspondent Chloe Ailello spoke with Jeff Miller, the executive vice president of communications, public affairs, and policy for the NFL, about the studies, as well as the recent lawsuit filed against the NFL by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores. "Maybe we can learn things from other alternative pain approaches that are going to benefit our player population and then sports medicine as a whole," Miller said.
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This April, Madison Square Garden will be hosting the first-ever women's boxing match to headline at the arena in its 140 years of history in boxing. Undisputed lightweight champion, Katie Taylor, and seven-division champion, Amanda Serrano, will go head-to-head for a career-high guaranteed seven-figure purse for both of them. The pair joined Cheddar News to talk about the upcoming "fight of their lives." "I mean, this is the first step I believe," said Serrano. "Unheard of, two women headlining the Garden, we get in the biggest paydays of our career, I hope it continues to break down barriers."
A year after announcing plans for a name change, Washington, DC's NFL team has settled on Commanders. The update comes after receiving years of criticism for the previous nickname deemed highly offensive by Native American groups and communities.
