In recent years women’s professional sports has grown massively and female athlete’s pay across different sports has increased.
The reason for this often times is reflected in simple supply and demand, if fans are interested and tune in, in large numbers on linear or digital to new sports or tournaments, the product grows and thus women are paid more if the sports are interesting and entertaining to the general public.
Often times this gets lost in a fairness argument that women are not paid as equally as men which is rubbish, it comes down to who the big stars are and what the most exciting and well produced and distributed pro sports are, ultimately, telling the stories of the athletes in a professional but compelling manner.
In the sport of tennis female tennis star Jessica Pegula spoke on gender equality in sports and specifically in tennis to CNBC Television:
“Our next guest can weigh in on the rise of tennis, investment in the sport, in the future of women’s sports. Joining us now pro tennis player Jessica Pegula, currently ranked number three in the world and joins us from Beijing where she will compete for $1.1 million in prize money at the China Open tennis tournament. Jessica, I wouldn’t say tennis is the only place, but it might be the place where pay equality has been around the longest and most successful in viewership and everybody else. It’s amazing and I thinks a lot of that we have to give credit to Billie Jean King and what was happening long before you were born but I was watching. Definitely. First of all thanks for having me. Like you said, we’ve been, you know, fighting for equality in the sport, obviously, since I think Billie Jean King started that trend and we’re just trying to continue I think to grow that. I don’t think it’s quite consistent everywhere, at least for us on tour, on the WTA tour comparative to the ATP, but we’ve seen it at a lot of the top events. Yeah. It’s cool and there’s a lot of prize money here in Beijing being a WTA as well. The old expression, you eat what you kill. What I mean by that with women’s tennis, you get the ratings. Sometimes women’s tennis has higher rate thanks on the men’s side. So you can see how it all works and filters down, and it all gets spread around. There are certain sports where that’s just not the case. Do you think we just throw out the realities of the economics of what goes on in these other sports for — how do you walk that line? It’s difficult. Yeah. I mean I think one of the things that we always think of is I think if you give the chance for women’s sport to get that viewership, then you’ll see that viewership go up. I think that’s just creating equal opportunity. I know that, you know, with the tv rights sometimes, obviously, the men pay — get paid a lot more for the rights for the tv and stuff like that and we’re always fighting for that in women’s sports, not just tennis, but every other sport, and I think we can get that a lot higher if we just get the opportunity as well. Like you said it’s fighting a super fine line of getting the viewership and then also having that opportunity as well. Sometimes that opportunity is a little lacking in the women’s sports. I feel like tennis is at the top of trend setting where we can get to. We see other sports fighting for that as well, especially women’s soccer. What an amazing family in terms of sports and everything else. We were talking early whether — CNBC — we have a new newsletter based on the sports business. Is there any type of bubble that you see just in — I mean, the NFL, Buffalo Bills, I actually had the Bills the other night. It was a complete blowout. I loved watching it. And, you know, your parents involved with the Bills and the Sabers for that matter. Do you — is it onward and upward or do you see retrenchment in overall sports? I mean to me I feel like it’s just growing. The money is growing. You’ve seen, obviously, teams being sold for a lot more. I mean, looking at hockey I think the Senators were also sold for like the highest amount in the NHL which is really cool. To me I only see it growing. I know the NFL is going more international as well having games in Brazil for the first time and the Bills have been a part of a few overseas games and continuing to grow their fan base. I think that’s really cool. Especially coming from where my family is associated with, with the Bills. It’s a really small type of blue collar field city.”
Some strong points made above to her credit.
The fact she is competing for such large sums of money shortly in China is testament to how women’s professional sport has grown massively in recent years specifically.
The thing is though, women’s tennis has always been great to watch and is very exciting, it always was.
The famous always attend the Wimbledon tournament every year and it lends itself to wider society as a sport.
It is just well produced though to watch on television as well as the athletes being extremely athletic, entertaining and with massive ability.
At the same time, male tennis players at the highest level would smash the best women tennis players in the world to pieces if they played one another, respectfully.
That is where the debate gets interesting as if you are saying in one breath, there should be equal pay, but should it not be somewhat based on ability too per above.
There is an appropriate mix but the fact remains women’s sports are continuing to grow and the good ones will grow a lot, with the athletes in those sports benefitting, while the ones that don’t take off won’t take off.
The market and numbers of viewers tuning in on linear and digital will decide that as pertaining to rights fees for the big sports networks that pay the leagues and tournaments for the content, whom ultimately pay the athletes.
Everything is driven by fan interest in the above argument, ultimately.
