Female Athlete Pay

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Tom Bombadil
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Female Athlete Pay

#1 Post by Tom Bombadil » Fri Jun 21, 2019 12:29 am

So I'm having a debate with myself and am very conflicted on the topic and want to hear different viewpoints regarding the pay women receive compared to men in professional sports.

The first part of my mind says that they should obviously get the same amount of pay, because they are doing the same "job" as their male counterpart. For example, Roger Federer and Serena Williams have the same profession and are both the most successful in their field, thus they should get paid the same, correct? I use this example because at Wimbeldon several years ago this was a big deal and now the monetary prizes for men and women are identical.

The other side of my brain says that while they have the same job, the produce a different product and thus the pay can be different. Two salespeople can have the same job and make different amounts of money based on how many sales they make. Male NBA players bring in exponentially more revenue via ticket sales, advertising revenue, tv revenue etc., compared to WNBA players, so they should get paid based on what they produce. I use basketball as an example here because to me it is the most apparent when looking at the difference in product. It is a very explosive, physical sport where things like vertical leap and just height in general have a big impact on the game. Obviously men have an advantage here, and the game is thus more explosive. One could argue this is a "better" product.


Yet when I watch women athletics, which is admittedly pretty rare, I find I enjoy it basically the same as male athletics. Probably the only reason I enjoy it less is because I'm not invested in the players or teams because I have no idea who they are.


Is it an issue that women athletes aren't paid as much as men?
How can women athletics grow so that people actually watch it? Because right now I don't see how they can support paying their athletes any more from a revenue standpoint.

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#2 Post by Octavious » Fri Jun 21, 2019 1:18 am

Professional sport is an entertainment industry. Where the women's game puts on a show that generates a lot of revenue they should be rewarded accordingly. Women's tennis is a good example, as it was arguably a better product than the serve volley period of the men's game.

More often than not, however, the entertainment value is linked to the experience of watching the best sportspeople on earth, which is almost never women. Watch the men's 100m final and you're watching the fastest human on the planet. Watch the women's 100m final and you're watching someone very good at running. It doesn't compare.
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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#3 Post by Tom Bombadil » Fri Jun 21, 2019 1:24 am

Yeah. I mean, I think the track example is the far end of the spectrum since that is just raw physicality that dominates the sport.

But do you think the product for things like womens hockey is 1,000 times more entertaining than mens? Because the pay difference is probably in that ballpark for high end players in each sport.

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#4 Post by Octavious » Fri Jun 21, 2019 2:05 am

I don't find any form of hockey particularly entertaining to watch so I'm not in a great place to comment. For sport like cricket I would be prepared to pay to watch a first class men's game, but would be in two minds about watching a women's game if the tickets were free.

If you abolished segregation of cricket and paid people purely by virtue of merit I doubt any women would be good enough to be professionals. It's only because of discrimination by sex that they get paid at all. Much like it's only because of discrimination by weight that small men can be professional boxers.

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#5 Post by Smokey Gem » Fri Jun 21, 2019 4:02 am

They should not be paid the same..

They receive equal compensation from money and the adoring leering looks of misogynistic a holes. They should be grateful to be allowed out of the house.

Womens beach volley ball is much better than the mens and its all about the skill not the uniform.

Ok lets get to brass tacks. Women sport has not been any where near as actively promoted or even allowed as mens sport. for a VERYYYY long time in the western world. So of course it is seen as a inferior product just like women have been view as inferior to men for generations. The system is set up to benefit male sports and is only now starting to realize the marketing value of womens sport. The fact is a % growth womens sport is doing very well so to limit the Pay is just another way of stopping something the" male majority" ( those in power ) don't like becoming more popular.

Just my opinion as a woman , if I am allowed a vote ?

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#6 Post by Smokey Gem » Fri Jun 21, 2019 4:08 am

The pay gap is real and hurtfull.

The only industry that immediately springs to mind that women pay is more than men is Porn...which means we are obviously much better a sex than any man. or does it simply put a real money value on what men truly and down deep think of women ...

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#7 Post by Smokey Gem » Fri Jun 21, 2019 4:16 am

The fact that your mind went should women get the same pay as opposed to do men deserve the same pay is kinda a reflection of what I am a little annoyed about..

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#8 Post by Smokey Gem » Fri Jun 21, 2019 4:18 am

Look at Tennis does Kyrios and Tomic deserve the same pay as Serena or Barty..just on the level playing feild of being decent humna beings ..

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#9 Post by Tom Bombadil » Fri Jun 21, 2019 10:52 am

Smokey Gem wrote:
Fri Jun 21, 2019 4:02 am
They should not be paid the same..

They receive equal compensation from money and the adoring leering looks of misogynistic a holes. They should be grateful to be allowed out of the house.

Womens beach volley ball is much better than the mens and its all about the skill not the uniform.

Ok lets get to brass tacks. Women sport has not been any where near as actively promoted or even allowed as mens sport. for a VERYYYY long time in the western world. So of course it is seen as a inferior product just like women have been view as inferior to men for generations. The system is set up to benefit male sports and is only now starting to realize the marketing value of womens sport. The fact is a % growth womens sport is doing very well so to limit the Pay is just another way of stopping something the" male majority" ( those in power ) don't like becoming more popular.

Just my opinion as a woman , if I am allowed a vote ?
I tend to agree with this but I also have issues with with the logistics of it. I love watching sports and whether is is soccer or hockey or tennis I find myself essentially just as entertained as watching the men’s leagues. Like I said earlier, the only reason I get less enjoyment is because I don’t really know any of the athletes.

Having said all that, when I watch sports it’s men 95% of the time. Clearly it’s a failure of marketing and just general sexism, but is it as simple as increase exposure and marketing and pay will rise?

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#10 Post by Tom Bombadil » Fri Jun 21, 2019 11:02 am

Smokey Gem wrote:
Fri Jun 21, 2019 4:16 am
The fact that your mind went should women get the same pay as opposed to do men deserve the same pay is kinda a reflection of what I am a little annoyed about..
I don’t want to derail the thread by getting defensive, but in this instance I think I thought of it in the correct way. This isn’t the same as a man and a woman both working as accountants getting paid differently. Male sports leagues bring in billions of dollars. Women’s sports leagues largely do not. If the WNBA paid its players the same as men, the league would go bankrupt in one day.

I guess what I’m working my head around is whether the solution is to pay women athletes more and the figure it out, or if money needs to spent on marketing and such so more people are exposed

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#11 Post by Vaporwave » Fri Jun 21, 2019 11:14 am

Professional sports is a field where over payment abounds, it's ridiculous how much some of these men/women receive per season.

I'm more interested in a proposition for decreasing these huge inhumane sums that they receive rather than fretting over how much each can make.

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#12 Post by Tom Bombadil » Fri Jun 21, 2019 12:43 pm

Vaporwave wrote:
Fri Jun 21, 2019 11:14 am
Professional sports is a field where over payment abounds, it's ridiculous how much some of these men/women receive per season.

I'm more interested in a proposition for decreasing these huge inhumane sums that they receive rather than fretting over how much each can make.
Women athletes in many sports do not make absurd amounts. The average WNBA player makes around $80,000. The MINIMUM an NBA player makes is around $850,000

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#13 Post by Hellenic Riot » Fri Jun 21, 2019 1:13 pm

I think the huge success of the Women's Football World Cup at the moment goes to show that there is an appetite for this sort of thing when it's marketed and shown, and the market really is there.

While I do think that it could have done with being a bit smaller so that the amateur teams didn't qualify (results like USA 13-0 Thailand undermine some of its credibility and give a bad impression imo), there's no doubt that ticket sales and viewing figures have been huge and that it's really taking off in a lot of the world. Whether that means that they should get equal pay to male footballers - perhaps not, because that's utterly unsustainable at this time - but it's certainly heading on the right trajectory. And if a female player arrives who becomes as big a marketing machine as Ronaldo or Messi, why not?

As for other sports, there's a lot of other variables in there. Tennis has obviously done it and done it extremely successfully - and there are probably just as many Tennis "legends" you could name that are female as there are male. And I think that other sports with mid-range (for sport) paygrades could viably and sustainably institute similar measures - Golf springs to mind immediately, where you could surely have a women's tournament run concurrently with the men's like they do in Tennis.

Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova are just as big a marketing machine and just as famous as Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, so it does go to show that if the opportunity is there then it can and will be taken. And when it comes to sports which get pretty much zero viewing outside of the Olympics - why pay a male runner differently to a female? A medal is a medal, at the end of the day, and most of those athletes are pretty much paid solely to get medals.
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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#14 Post by Octavious » Fri Jun 21, 2019 6:54 pm

Absolutely, HR. If there's a chap who is so good at a sport that, after a lifetime of training, there are people willing to pay good money to watch him perform, why not take his money off him to reward someone who isn't as good?
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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#15 Post by Octavious » Fri Jun 21, 2019 6:59 pm

What I find most upsetting is that world champions of boxing are paid many millions of dollars whilst world champions of diplomacy get practically nothing. How wrong is that? We shouldn't let pathetic excuses such as boxing having a much larger player base, audience, and superior product be used to prop up what is so clearly an example of unjust discrimination.
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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#16 Post by orathaic » Fri Jun 21, 2019 10:22 pm

Overpaid athletes deserve to earn no more than the average industrial wage.

Then we can have pay parity and avoid the most disgusting excesses of capitalism.

Also a wealth tax, and massively increased taxation of all income earned after the first million.

Performers will still do it for the status, and we can still be entertained. But we can end the discrimination between top boxers and top diplomacy players.

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#17 Post by Stressedlines » Fri Jun 21, 2019 11:12 pm

My goodness. This is honestly one of the worst threads ....ever

Title and subject were great. What followed was rubbish
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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#18 Post by Smokey Gem » Sat Jun 22, 2019 12:38 am

While I do think that it could have done with being a bit smaller so that the amateur teams didn't qualify (results like USA 13-0 Thailand undermine some of its credibility and give a bad impression imo)

there have been manmy caeses in the mens game as well. I rember a couple of times Germnay smashed one of the lower contenders 8-0

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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#19 Post by Octavious » Sat Jun 22, 2019 8:49 am

The women's world cup is an interesting one. The issue with results that question credibility isn't straightforward. Part of the reason for having a world cup is to expand the sport, and expanding into new areas ultimately will see teams enter who aren't ready for it. As long as they don't go batshit crazy and hold a world cup in a location that doesn't care about it or have a team worthy of playing (cough Qatar cough) the occasional silly game won't be too damaging.

But the women's game has the potential to be very successful. As long as we don't constantly measure it against the men's game which it will never be equal to. A sport played by the best players in a subset of the population will never match a game played by the best players in the world.
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Re: Female Athlete Pay

#20 Post by Stressedlines » Sat Jun 22, 2019 10:22 am

Smokey Gem wrote:
Sat Jun 22, 2019 12:38 am
While I do think that it could have done with being a bit smaller so that the amateur teams didn't qualify (results like USA 13-0 Thailand undermine some of its credibility and give a bad impression imo)

there have been manmy caeses in the mens game as well. I rember a couple of times Germnay smashed one of the lower contenders 8-0
Didnt Germany smash Brazil 8 1 not so long ago...in the wc

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