duncan228
07-17-2007, 01:50 PM
I wasn't sure where to post this.
I put it here because of the WNBA info.
Please move it if it belongs somewhere else. (Other Sports Forum?)
http://www.ocregister.com/sports/women-equal-sports-1769287-million-open
Equal pay in sports isn't about the money
MARCIA C. SMITH
Register columnist
When Venus Williams won Wimbledon two weeks ago, she raised the Venus Rosewater Dish and earned a check equal to that of the men's singles champion for the first time since the tournament's 1884 inclusion of ladies' singles.
This was a historic moment in sports, a symbolic moment for all of society and a revolutionary moment that should've been rendered in oils by Delacroix if he were alive to paint the modern-day sports version of "Liberty Leading the People."
Champion Roger Federer won $1.41 million, Williams won $1.41 million, and the score at the end of the day was the ideal love-love.
This separate-but-equal payday policy isn't about the money. It's not saying that women are just as physically strong as men or that men and women are the same. Because they're not.
But as champions in sports, be it on the men's side or the women's side, they deserve equal rewards.
No professional sport except tennis, which has a World Team Tennis event in Newport Beach on Sunday, and beach volleyball, whose Association of Volleyball Professional tour lands in Long Beach this weekend, offers equal pay.
"Whether it's two cents, $25,000 or $1.5 million, the money doesn't matter; it's the message that women should have the same opportunity to earn the same rewards that's important," said tennis legend Billie Jean King, who successfully lobbied for equal pay at the U.S. Open in the Title-IX birth year of 1973.
Wimbledon, the world's most prestigious tennis tournament that holds stodgily to an all-white dress code and its traditions, was the last of the Grand Slams — 33 years after the U.S. Open — to change its paying ways.
Its powers had long resisted, arguing that the differential resulted from the unequal play of men toiling through best-of-5-set matches vs. women competing in a best-of-3 format.
But the "play," Williams told the All England Club when she made her personal appeal last year, is equal because the rivalries, competitive styles, personalities and entertainment value of the women's game is just as compelling, if not more, than that of the men's game.
"The equal pay issue has been around for the last few years and something Billie Jean King has been actively fighting for with us, so I thought it was important to acknowledge what she did, being a visionary in the sport," Williams said. "There would be no Venus or Serena without her."
Both King, the World Team Tennis co-founder, and Williams, who will be playing for WTT's Philadelphia Freedom, return for Sunday's event against the Newport Beach Breakers at Newport Beach Country Club. The 32-year-old WTT has men and women on teams, earning points for singles and doubles victories and sharing equally in the rewards.
"When men and women play together, not even in the same game but in the same circuit and league," King said, "there can be equality."
In an ideal world, all sports would follow the WTT ideal or the equal pay of tennis' top events. But only beach volleyball does, with the men and women competing under the same umbrella since 2001, when sports agent Leonard Armato acquired the near-bankrupt AVP.
"Everyone agreed that we'd be stronger together," said Armato, who restructured the former men's-only tour to give women equal prize money, center-court time and TV exposure. "It has paid off and given us an opportunity to grow the entire sport."
In May's Huntington Beach Open, men's champions Mike Lambert and Stein Metzger and women's champions Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh each received $20,000 team checks.
Not every sport can offer equal opportunity of what Armato called the "egalitarian way" because men and women, in professional golf and basketball, for example, compete in separate leagues that operate independently, strike their own media and sponsorship deals and attract different audiences.
King agreed: "With tennis and volleyball, men and women started around the same time and could go to the audience and the sponsors together. In other professional sports, the men's side has been around longer, leaving the women's side with the crumbs. A lot of women are happy to accept the crumbs."
In golf, the PGA was founded in 1916; the LPGA, 1950. When Tiger Woods won the 2006 British Open at Royal Liverpool, he earned a $1.338 million check — one of several $1 million first prizes on the PGA Tour.
Only one LPGA event offers a $1 million victory check: the Ginn Open in Reunion, Fla. (The second place award is $100,000.) To approach the $1 million mark any other way on the LPGA Tour would require winning at least three of the four majors — the Kraft Nabisco Championship ($300,000), McDonald's LPGA ($300,000), U.S. Women's Open ($560,000) and Weetabix British Open ($305,440).
If a female golfer wants the exposure and paydays of the PGA, she will have to make her way into a men's event the way Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie have done with varying success.
In pro basketball, the disparity between the NBA, which began in 1946, and the WNBA, which started in 1996, is much more pronounced.
The 30-team NBA raked in an estimated $3.13 billion last season, attracting an average of 17,759 a game through an 82-game regular season and allowing the average player salary to be the highest in pro sports at $5.215 million. Top players earn upward of $20 million.
The WNBA, which continues to exist with the financial backing of the NBA, has 13 teams, each playing 34 regular season games during the NBA's offseason and draws an average game attendance around 9,000. The average player salary is close to $50,000, with the top players capped at $100,000.
"Most women's sports lag so far behind men's sports in the time they've been playing, the prize money, sponsors, every matrix possible, and struggle because of economics," Armato said. "We're a young league with a new sport, so we've had the opportunity to do it right from the outset."
As we last saw at Wimbledon with Federer and Williams and we can see at every WTT and AVP Tour stop, separate but equal is a luxury, one with a message that leaves society richer.
I put it here because of the WNBA info.
Please move it if it belongs somewhere else. (Other Sports Forum?)
http://www.ocregister.com/sports/women-equal-sports-1769287-million-open
Equal pay in sports isn't about the money
MARCIA C. SMITH
Register columnist
When Venus Williams won Wimbledon two weeks ago, she raised the Venus Rosewater Dish and earned a check equal to that of the men's singles champion for the first time since the tournament's 1884 inclusion of ladies' singles.
This was a historic moment in sports, a symbolic moment for all of society and a revolutionary moment that should've been rendered in oils by Delacroix if he were alive to paint the modern-day sports version of "Liberty Leading the People."
Champion Roger Federer won $1.41 million, Williams won $1.41 million, and the score at the end of the day was the ideal love-love.
This separate-but-equal payday policy isn't about the money. It's not saying that women are just as physically strong as men or that men and women are the same. Because they're not.
But as champions in sports, be it on the men's side or the women's side, they deserve equal rewards.
No professional sport except tennis, which has a World Team Tennis event in Newport Beach on Sunday, and beach volleyball, whose Association of Volleyball Professional tour lands in Long Beach this weekend, offers equal pay.
"Whether it's two cents, $25,000 or $1.5 million, the money doesn't matter; it's the message that women should have the same opportunity to earn the same rewards that's important," said tennis legend Billie Jean King, who successfully lobbied for equal pay at the U.S. Open in the Title-IX birth year of 1973.
Wimbledon, the world's most prestigious tennis tournament that holds stodgily to an all-white dress code and its traditions, was the last of the Grand Slams — 33 years after the U.S. Open — to change its paying ways.
Its powers had long resisted, arguing that the differential resulted from the unequal play of men toiling through best-of-5-set matches vs. women competing in a best-of-3 format.
But the "play," Williams told the All England Club when she made her personal appeal last year, is equal because the rivalries, competitive styles, personalities and entertainment value of the women's game is just as compelling, if not more, than that of the men's game.
"The equal pay issue has been around for the last few years and something Billie Jean King has been actively fighting for with us, so I thought it was important to acknowledge what she did, being a visionary in the sport," Williams said. "There would be no Venus or Serena without her."
Both King, the World Team Tennis co-founder, and Williams, who will be playing for WTT's Philadelphia Freedom, return for Sunday's event against the Newport Beach Breakers at Newport Beach Country Club. The 32-year-old WTT has men and women on teams, earning points for singles and doubles victories and sharing equally in the rewards.
"When men and women play together, not even in the same game but in the same circuit and league," King said, "there can be equality."
In an ideal world, all sports would follow the WTT ideal or the equal pay of tennis' top events. But only beach volleyball does, with the men and women competing under the same umbrella since 2001, when sports agent Leonard Armato acquired the near-bankrupt AVP.
"Everyone agreed that we'd be stronger together," said Armato, who restructured the former men's-only tour to give women equal prize money, center-court time and TV exposure. "It has paid off and given us an opportunity to grow the entire sport."
In May's Huntington Beach Open, men's champions Mike Lambert and Stein Metzger and women's champions Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh each received $20,000 team checks.
Not every sport can offer equal opportunity of what Armato called the "egalitarian way" because men and women, in professional golf and basketball, for example, compete in separate leagues that operate independently, strike their own media and sponsorship deals and attract different audiences.
King agreed: "With tennis and volleyball, men and women started around the same time and could go to the audience and the sponsors together. In other professional sports, the men's side has been around longer, leaving the women's side with the crumbs. A lot of women are happy to accept the crumbs."
In golf, the PGA was founded in 1916; the LPGA, 1950. When Tiger Woods won the 2006 British Open at Royal Liverpool, he earned a $1.338 million check — one of several $1 million first prizes on the PGA Tour.
Only one LPGA event offers a $1 million victory check: the Ginn Open in Reunion, Fla. (The second place award is $100,000.) To approach the $1 million mark any other way on the LPGA Tour would require winning at least three of the four majors — the Kraft Nabisco Championship ($300,000), McDonald's LPGA ($300,000), U.S. Women's Open ($560,000) and Weetabix British Open ($305,440).
If a female golfer wants the exposure and paydays of the PGA, she will have to make her way into a men's event the way Annika Sorenstam and Michelle Wie have done with varying success.
In pro basketball, the disparity between the NBA, which began in 1946, and the WNBA, which started in 1996, is much more pronounced.
The 30-team NBA raked in an estimated $3.13 billion last season, attracting an average of 17,759 a game through an 82-game regular season and allowing the average player salary to be the highest in pro sports at $5.215 million. Top players earn upward of $20 million.
The WNBA, which continues to exist with the financial backing of the NBA, has 13 teams, each playing 34 regular season games during the NBA's offseason and draws an average game attendance around 9,000. The average player salary is close to $50,000, with the top players capped at $100,000.
"Most women's sports lag so far behind men's sports in the time they've been playing, the prize money, sponsors, every matrix possible, and struggle because of economics," Armato said. "We're a young league with a new sport, so we've had the opportunity to do it right from the outset."
As we last saw at Wimbledon with Federer and Williams and we can see at every WTT and AVP Tour stop, separate but equal is a luxury, one with a message that leaves society richer.