Injustice in Sports ?
Juan Pablo Ruiz
Throughout time , males have been displayed and stereotyped as the more dominant gender when it comes to sports , and as a result of that , they have been and are being paid more in every sport across the globe . One visible examples of this is in soccer , where Melissa Locker , writer for Fast Company business magazine , writes , “ Specifically , the prize money for this year ’ s women ’ s World Cup is $ 30 million across all 24 teams , double the $ 15 million it was in 2015 , but still a sliver ( 7.5 %) of the $ 400 million in prize money for the 2018 men ’ s World Cup in Russia . And the total prize money for the men ’ s teams playing at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will rise to $ 440 million . According to the Australian players ’ union , at this rate , it will take until 2039 for pay to become equal .” This is an immense pay gap between women ’ s and men ’ s world cups seeing as they both play the same sport , and even though both these world cups don ’ t bring in nearly the same amount of revenue ($ 4.6B to $ 131M ), the winning team should make more than $ 30 million seeing as they are the best women ’ s team in the world .
Another clear example of this can be found in an article published by Queenballersclub that says , “ The average WNBA player makes $ 100,658.10 a year . That ' s less than an eighth of what an NBA rookie makes ($ 820,000 ) on average .” Now this is an insane statistic seeing as an average WNBA player has played in the league more than a rookie in the NBA . The average NBA salary for all players is $ 7.7 million , compared to the $ 100,658.10 that WNBA players make . Now the annual revenue for the NBA is $ 8.76 billion compared to the $ 60 million that the WNBA makes in revenue per year . This shows that the NBA makes 146 times more money than the WNBA makes , which explains why WNBA players make less money on average than NBA players , even though $ 100,658.10 is still less than these WNBA players deserve to make per year .
Another sport where there is a noticeable difference in pay is Tennis . An article published by CNBC states , “ Outside of the Grand Slam events , The New York Times reports that the annual prize money for the top 100 earners in the Women ' s Tennis Association ( WTA ) is roughly 80 cents to every dollar earned by the top 100 men in the Association of Tennis Professionals ”. Now this might not seem like a lot at first sight , but considering how much these people actually make , the sum of the money men make compared to the sum of money that women make is a huge difference . Another example is displayed in another article published by CNBC which in which the author writes , “ According to the lawsuit , if the men ' s and women ' s teams won each of the 20 non-tournament games they ' re contractually expected to play , the women ' s team players would earn a maximum of $ 99,000 , while the men ' s team players would earn $ 263,320 ”. Now people could perceive this in a couple of different ways , one is where people could say this is an immense injustice towards women since they are working just as hard as men . The other way people could perceive this is that since the men ’ s grand slam tournament brings in approximately $ 380 million in revenue compared to the women ’ s $ 50.8 million ( NY Times ), then it ’ s fair that the tournament that makes more money pays their players more , since there is more money to pay .
People can choose to perceive this any way they want , and both cases make compelling arguments as to why there is such a massive pay gap in women ’ s sports compared to men ’ s , but in the end , there may never be a change in this situation .
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