Most Americans have seen a professional sports game in their life. Whether closely following all forty games of basketball star Caitlin Clark, dropping in on a local tennis match, or streaming the FIFA World Cup every four years, watching a sport you love has been a popular pastime for decades. Have you ever wondered, though, how much those athletes playing in front of you get paid? Chances are, if they were women, it was far less than if they were men.
The gender pay gap spans beyond sports and across nearly all fields of employment. On average, women earn eighty-four cents for every dollar that a man in the same position earns. Sports show an even greater disparity. Take the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), for example. In the 2022-23 season, NBA players earned salaries ranging between 953,000 dollars and nearly 50,000,000 dollars, while WNBA players earned between 60,000 dollars and 234,936 dollars. Similarly in soccer, Major League Soccer players earned more than three times the salaries of National Women’s Soccer League players. Additionally, there are vast inequalities in prize money and sponsorship income for male and female athletes: the 2023 FIFA Men’s World Cup prize money stood at a sum of 440 million dollars while the Women’s World Cup had a prize money total of 110 million dollars.
Gender inequality in tennis has been a central issue for decades, beginning with Billie Jean King’s threat to boycott the 1973 US Open after receiving less than half of the prize money of her male counterpart the previous year. With that, the US Open became the first major tennis tournament to award equal prize money for men and women. Since then, the three other major tennis tournaments have all followed suit. Although prize money for many tennis tournaments has been equalized, salaries remain greatly imbalanced, with the top ten male players earning around 53% more in total than their female counterparts. Tennis star Serena Williams has stated that while she “like[s] that people are starting to recognize that women do deserve equal pay,” changing major inequalities “takes time.”
This past year, basketball has drawn attention regarding the gender pay gap due to the starting salary of WNBA number one draft pick, Caitlin Clark. Clark will be given a salary of around 350 thousand dollars over the next four years, while Victor Wembanyama, last year’s top NBA draft pick, signed for an astonishing sum of 55,000,000 dollars. Of course, one must remember that athlete salaries are dependent on the wealth of their leagues, a fact especially evident in professional basketball, where the NBA generates around twenty times the revenue of the WNBA. However, this does not explain everything, as top male players receive far more than twenty times the salaries of their female counterparts. Overall, around half of league revenue in the NBA goes towards player salaries, while WNBA players receive only around a quarter of league revenue. Although star athletes such as Clark are bound to make millions more through endorsements and other partnerships, her first year pay of seventy-six thousand dollars is astonishingly low for a top draft pick. In soccer, similar league revenue disparities are present. The National Women’s Soccer League made just over 110 million dollars, while Major League Soccer generated nearly 2 billion dollars.
Many factors contribute to this difference in sports leagues’ revenue, including the fact that women’s teams receive far less media coverage. In 2023, forty percent of professional athletes were female, but only fifteen percent of sports coverage was of women’s games. Viewership, as well, remains heavily imbalanced. Once again, the NBA and WNBA demonstrate this, as 11.64 million viewed the NBA finals, while only a mere 728 thousand watched the WNBA final in 2023. This contributes to fewer sponsorships and partnering opportunities for female athletes, as less media coverage and fewer viewers result in fewer people seeing endorsed products. Even with the little coverage that women do receive, it is egregious that less than one percent of sports sponsorships are given to women.
It is clear that the gender pay gap in professional sports is a widespread issue in many ways. President Joe Biden stated, in response to fans’ outrage at Clark’s starting salary, “right now we’re seeing that even if you’re the best, women are not paid their fair share,” adding, “it’s time that we give our daughters the same opportunities as our sons and ensure women are paid what they deserve.” Biden’s words are not only applicable to sports but to all professions exhibiting a pay gap; however, as Williams said, “you just can’t expect things to change overnight.” Instead, you have to work to make change.