Burning down the house

The women are suing the CSA BoD. What's up with that?

Photo by Dave Hoefler on Unsplash

It’s been a few days now since the news broke that the union representing the Women’s National Team is suing the CSA board of directors from 2018 for their role in approving the contract between Canadian Soccer Business and Canada Soccer.

Most of you reading this are aware of the details, but if not, read this.

There’s a lot to unpack about this and it’s difficult to have a balanced and rational conversation about it. People tend to either blindly support the women because of a deep felt belief that everything the CSA does is wrong, or they are outright dismissive of the women’s grievances for, well, only they can tell us why they think the women should just shut up and play. I have my theories.

The middle ground here is much harder to stand on. Let’s try, however.

Starting with the women’s overall grievance, which in simple terms is that they do not have the ability to maximize their commercial potential because of the CSB deal — a deal that was signed prior to them winning a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics.

You can understand where they are coming from. In hindsight, the CSB deal did leave a lot of money on the table. The trade off of guaranteed revenue over potential higher revenue was a gamble that the CSA took and lost. The women understandably are frustrated by this, especially in a time when the CSA has to cut corners everywhere because of a lack of funds.

The CSB deal is not working for the national teams. At all. This is clear as day.

What’s not clear, however, is if that is something that could have been predicted in 2018. Was it reasonable to think that getting $3-million to $3.5-million guaranteed was a good gamble for the CSA to take in 2018.

This is where it gets complicated. In fact, if you were to force me to offer an opinion on that question, I’d suggest it was. The idea that Canada would win a gold medal on the women’s side and that the men would get back to the World Cup was farfetched. It truly was. further to that the CSA was not particularly good at getting sponsorship money through the door. As part of the agreement, CSB was now responsible for seeking the partnerships (corporate partners are under contract with CSB, not Canada Soccer). Under CSB management the amount of corporate sponsorships has doubled. How much of that is the success of the teams and how much is having a more professional approach to seeking partnerships?

Probably a bit from column a and a big from column b, but I’m not sure you can know for certain. The point here though is that having that change of approach is absolutely a factor and has to be considered when evaluating the choices made in 2018.

That’s especially the case because the women’s position is this, is that the board failed them in order to prioritize the needs of CSB.

From the TSN article linked above:

If something good is to come out of this — and I use the word “good” loosely here— it’s that this question will be fairy evaluated: was the CSA acting in the best interest of Canadian Soccer by signing the CSB deal. Not if that deal looks good now, but rather if it was a reasonable deal to sign at the time.

Having that question answered in a real court rather than in the court of public opinion is a positive thing, however.

Of course, CSB could have avoided all of this by being more proactive about the creation of a women’s league. Ultimately, I still think that’s the way out of this mess. It would involve a bit of give from both sides but if CSB and Project 8 were to work together to get that league launched then there might be a pathway forward that ends this cycle of constant conflict between the players and the CSA.