Imagine playing for a team that’s placed at every Olympics including earning gold, has won 4 world cups, has set the record for the highest number of viewers in its nation for that sport, and is ranked number one in the world. Now imagine playing for a team that would be lucky to qualify for the Olympics, or the world cup, having no titles and is ranked 24th overall in the world.
Now, I’m sure if you had the choice it would be easy to pick which team to play for. However, what if I told you that playing for the second team with no titles would be paid ten times more than the first team. Maybe this changes your mind, but unfortunately, this isn’t just a made-up scenario, this is the reality of the USA women’s national soccer team compared to the men’s. Where this trend is consistent with most sports between male and female athletes.
The wage gap between male and female athletes is inexcusable and embarrassing to professional organizations. As a female athlete, I never looked too far into my dreams past college sports knowing the reality of this wage gap. Many people may have an idea of the wage gap, but the harsh reality will shock you and the overall effects of this reality. To understand further about this reality I looked into the main excuses from organizations in control of this wage gap and the success and popularity of male and female sports overall.
Many of you could probably guess that in professional sports on average men are paid higher than women. However, I’m sure the gap is much larger then you may think. According to 2019, A Look at Male and Female Professional Athlete Salaries, article by Adelphi University, professional female athletes make just a fraction of what men earn in the same profession. In the WNBA the average salary is only $75,000, where the NBA the average salary is 4.5 million. In the MLS (North America’s men's professional soccer league), men earn on average around $200 000, whereas in the women’s professional soccer league the average pay is around $30 000.
The average professional pay isn’t the only issue, highly profitable tournaments offer different prize money to the different genders. According to a January 21st, 2018 article, Why Are Female athletes still Paid less than males by David Cox, a regular columnist for sports publications, FIFA the football’s international corporation, awarded a total prize pool of $15 million for the last Women’s World Cup, whereas the men’s pool was $576 million. As of 2007, the Wimbledon offered more prize money to the male athletes than the female, despite this change women today are still paid less than men in most tournaments.
It is obvious the pay gap between women’s professional sports and men’s’ is outrageous, and many of you may be coming to some reasons why this is, which is what we’ll be looking into next. To find out the reasoning behind this wage gap, I looked into the excuses of the organizations in control of this matter. Most organizations claim that female sports don’t generate as much revenue as men’s, therefore don’t receive comparable funds to pay their female athletes. Although this is true in most cases, according to the same article by David Cox, most organizations don’t even try to bring awareness to female games in order to generate that revenue. Just like any company would invest money into advertising a new product to create a return, organizations don’t invest enough money into advertising female sports, as they have done for men. We’ve all seen the crazy Super Bowl, World Cup, or Grand Slam advertisement’s/commercials, but have we ever seen commercials advertising a women’s professional leagues?
Most organizations chose not to invest in women’s leagues by having poor quality film, not creating advertisements, and not making games available to be viewed on popular sports channels.
“We can’t expect it to generate the same sponsor and TV value as the men’s game without first investing money to allow it to catch up commercially, there’s huge potential, but we can’t expect female players to be Premier League standard if they’re having to work part-time shirts in a coffee shop,” a quote by Mark Lichtenhein, Chairman of the Ladies European Tour.
The issue on pay for female athletes doesn’t just fall on the organizations themselves, it’s also created through incentivizing tournaments. John Didulica, chief executive of Professional Footballers Australia said, “There’s a need for tournaments such as the world series, world championships, and FIFA to use their huge income from the men’s side to invest in the women’s by increasing the bonuses and prize-money for their tournaments.” That would encourage all the national federations to invest more money in women’s sports due to the greater financial incentive.
“In 2007 Wimbledon awarded equal prize money to both male and female tennis players.”
Before then the Grand Slam was the only tournament that awarded equal prize money to both male and female athletes. Records show that equal pay has not hurt Wimbledon, as prize money has nearly doubled in the last five years for men and women.
Although most female sports may not generate as much revenue as men’s’, organizations haven’t taken the proper steps to develop them, where the popularity of women’s sports is one that continues to develop. Female sports haven’t been around for nearly as long as men’s, putting them behind in popularity, however, in recent years we’ve seen uprising interest for female sports. According to an article from August of 2018, published by History.com, Some of the highest-earning leagues, the NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL who are all tailored to men have been around for up to 150 years, allowing them lots of time to grow and gain popularity.However, according to a 2014 article by the Reno Gazette-Journal, it wasn’t until the past 25 years where these leagues really took off popularity-wise. Female leagues such as the WNBA, NWSL, and CWHL, have only been around between 7–22 years. Comparing this to the men’s leagues which have been around for much longer and have taken a minimum of 50 years before rapidly growing in interest. With that in mind, the women's national soccer program has only been around since 1985, whereas the men were created exactly 100 years earlier in 1885. The men’s team has won zero world cups and has only made 10 world cup appearances since then. The women’s team has won 3 world cups and has qualified for every world cup since being established. The popularity for the women’s team has taken off, according to U.S Soccer, in 2016 the women’s team generated $26 million in revenue, compared to the men’s team that brought in $22 million. That same year the male players made nearly 10 times more than his female counterpart.
It is obvious there is a huge pay gap between female and male professional athletes. I hope you’ve come to understand why the reasoning behind it is nearly inexcusable and ways to fix it. As the rise for equality due to the popularity and success of female sports continues to grow and should not be ignored. Overall, the wage gap between male and female athletes is inexcusable and embarrassing to professional organizations. Next time you watch a female sport, you’re supporting more than the team you watch, you're supporting the ongoing revolution of equal pay for equal play and I encourage you to watch as many female sporting events as possible.
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