Professional sports is one of the biggest industries in the modern society, a lot of money is invested, and modern athletes earn serious amounts of money. Most of the mainstream sport leagues have enormous budgets, but this money isn’t always fairly distributed between genders. For example, the average salary in the WNBA is around 75000$ and the maximum goes to 115000$. It can sound like a normal revenue, but the average NBA player makes 6,388,007$ per year and it goes as high as 37.5M$. We can definitely see that there is a huge wage gap. This huge disproportion is present is most of the professional sports leagues.
The first question that comes to mind is why male make so much money compared to female. The answers can vary, but I think that the main reason is the coverage and the publicity the different sports get. For example, the leagues like the NBA or the NHL make a lot of publicity and this publicity creates a bigger fan base and more money. It’s very different for women sports. When did you see a WNBA commercial? The fact that the male leagues have more publicity then the female leagues makes a huge difference. Another interesting thing is the fact that some people say that male leagues are more entertaining, but I think that they are not right. In fact, women hockey and gymnastics are some of the most watched events at the Olympics. This proves that women’s sports are not less interesting, but professional women athletes make so much less money then male athletes.
There is always a solution to a problem. The International Swimming League (ISL) proved it. This professional swimming leagues gives equal winning bonuses to men and women, also both genders make the same amount of points during the season and both genders get the same public attention and contracts. It’s the first professional league to give equal revenues and budgets to both men and women athletes. Even the MVP of the league is chosen between men and women, and the 2019 MVP was a Sarah Sjostrom, a fantastic women athlete!
One thought on “Blog 2: Women, sports and money”
It is true that there is a huge inequality when it comes about salaries, we hear more about actresses being paid less than male actors. ISL is a good example that salary between both genders should be the same, and that we can change the inequalities by simply giving equal revenues to both genders when they are working/competing in the same field.