Equal Pay In Sports Isn't About The Money

[duncan228]

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/wom...7-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 le-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, compe ive 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 Mic e 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.

[JMarkJohns]

When the WNBA starts to generate enough of its own revenue to overpay its players the way the NBA does, then, and only then, will this "equal pay" be accurate.

Don't tell me its not about the money.

I'm not even sure the WNBA is self-operating yet. Just a few years back, when they threatened to strike ( ) they needed funding from the NBA, as I recall.

If not, then I'm wrong. Still, I know the WNBA can't afford to pay it's average players what the NBA can, for the simple reason laid out in the article. Attendence is almost half of what the NBA draws, for roughly 2/5ths the games.

[duncan228]

I'm not even sure the WNBA is self-operating yet. Just a few years back, when they threatened to strike ( ) they needed funding from the NBA, as I recall.

If not, then I'm wrong. Still, I know the WNBA can't afford to pay it's average players what the NBA can, for the simple reason laid out in the article. Attendence is almost half of what the NBA draws, for roughly 2/5ths the games.

The article does say that the WNBA has financial backing from the NBA.

[JMarkJohns]

I was skimming and missed it. Proves that if they can't generate enough money to pay what they are now, that they aren't en led or deserving of more to pay for what they can't.

[DarkReign]

Attendence is almost half of what the NBA draws, for roughly 2/5ths the games.

Gate numbers mean jack to the NBA and the NFL. Its the TV contracts that pay these players their money.

If/When the WNBA starts drawing 5 million viewers for a regular season game, they can start to about it.

[sandman]

Supply and demand. When the WNBA becomes as in demand as the NBA, then they can start looking for equal pay. They need to pay their dues and build up their fan base like the NBA did for 50 years. If they can only build it to 9K per game and have to rely on subsidies, then they should be thankful for what they get. I mean, the Comets are owned by a guy who owns a furniture store here in Houston and does the corny commercials where his kids are throwing around money while he screams into the camera.

[spurs_fan_in_exile]

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[Spurminator]

So it's not 6006 I-45 North between Temple and Parker anymore?

694-5570!

[sandman]

So it's not 6006 I-45 North between Temple and Parker anymore?

694-5570!

That is Mattress Mac at Gallery Furniture, where you don't have to deal with those annoying back, back, back, back, back orders. Buy today, get it delivered today. Gallery Furniture saves you money, TODAY!

[Extra Stout]

Pay equity between the sexes in pro sports is justified when the professional athletes of one sex draw fan support and revenues comparable to those of the other sex.

I guess the problem is that gosh-darned capitalism. If only we had a society where enlightened souls like Marcia Smith could determine the equal amounts that athletes "deserve," society could be so enriched. From each according to their ability, to each according to what Marcia Smith says.

[Pistol...2K4]

When the WNBA starts to generate enough of its own revenue to overpay its players the way the NBA does, then, and only then, will this "equal pay" be accurate.

Don't tell me its not about the money.

I'm not even sure the WNBA is self-operating yet. Just a few years back, when they threatened to strike ( ) they needed funding from the NBA, as I recall.

If not, then I'm wrong. Still, I know the WNBA can't afford to pay it's average players what the NBA can, for the simple reason laid out in the article. Attendence is almost half of what the NBA draws, for roughly 2/5ths the games.

Couldn't have said it better...I noticed that the revenue figure generated by the WNBA during the same period as the 3.13 Bill the NBA generated was conveniently left out. The fact is nobody cares about the WNBA and if it folds(which it should be allowed to by the league) its likely no one will even notice....Most of the women who play in the WNBA look like horses

[MrChug]

"...pay...not about the money..."

I'm confused.

[dbreiden83080]

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.

That is why they don't deserve it. Any tennis fan knows that playing a grueling 5 set match is so much tougher than a 3 setter. Make the women play 5 sets and then they should get equal pay it is not fair that they do.