Should Women Athletes Get Paid Equal As Male Athletes? Over the history of sports, the salary gap between male and female athletes has become a popular topic lately because women feel like they deserve equal pay. The reason why women athletes don’t get paid equally isn’t because of their sexuality; it’s because male athletes have more publicity than female athletes. Revenue is a big part of a players paycheck, so athletes have to bring in the money to make money. Male athletes also make more endorsement deals than most female athletes. The sports world also has multiple questions about this topic. Why does the world cup not give the same amount for both male and female winners? Why is it that tennis doesn’t have a huge pay gap? Does the player's …show more content…
One of the main reasons why male athletes get paid more than female athletes is because of the revenue they bring in. If you look up how much the NBA and WNBA make a year in revenue, you’ll find that the NBA makes 7.4 billion dollars while the WNBA makes 60 million dollars a year. The average ticket price of an NBA game is 89 dollars and the average ticket price is 17.42 dollars. There is a big difference between the NBA and WNBA in revenue alone. The average viewership for the NBA finals is 15.14 million people and the average viewership for the WNBA finals is 231,000 people. In the article “Male vs Female Professional Sports Salary Comparison” it states, “Up until 2020, the WNBA received 20% of their league’s revenues. That changed with a new community bargaining agreement, reached in January of 2020, which agreed to a 50-50 split and brought WNBA players in line with their male counterparts”(5). This quote shows that women athletes are now getting the same percent as male athletes, so they are getting equal treatment. This means that the NBA brings in more money than the WNBA, so therefore they get paid …show more content…
The answer to that question would be yes, because people would rather watch the best of the best that put on a show. They want to see people that can do the things no other athlete can do. That is why Serena Williams gets viewership, because she does things that no other tennis player can do. That is the reason people want to see Steph Curry every night, because he shoots like no other player to ever touch a basketball. When it comes down to skill, it definitely impacts the pay of athletes because that is what is causing people to buy tickets or other merchandise such as jerseys. Another reason how skill impacts the paychecks of athletes is that when organizations are determining who gets paid the most, they have to look at who has made the most impact. In the article “The Gender Wage Gap In Sports: Explaining The Pay Gap In Sports” it states, “ The performance of an athlete is constantly recorded through statistics and these statistics are updated every time an athlete competes in a new match or event. Therefore, there is a way to measure productivity and compare productivity levels through sports”(David Runcie). This quote shows that there are ways to compare who is the best player and this means we can see the difference in skill between male and female