Gender pay equality in sport: a market distortion under the guise of equity

Equal prize money for men's and women's Grand Slam tennis is a divisive topic with an interesting history. In 1972, Billy Jean King earned only US$10,000 for winning the women's US Open Tennis, compared to Ilie Năstase's US$25,000 for winning the men's. After King threatened to organise a boycott, the US Open in 1973 became the first major tennis tournament to offer equal prize money. Wimbledon in 2007 was the last Grand Slam tournament to yield. While women players strongly defend the equal pay policy, leading male tennis players generally avoid questions on the topic. Many obviously believe that the men deserve to be paid more, though maybe not two and a half times as much.

The BBC in 2014 looked at 56 global sports in an extensive study. Athletics, bowls, skating, marathons, shooting, and volleyball all were reported to have paid equal (though generally low) prize money. The BBC reported (in alphabetical order) the following sports as having the biggest gender disparity in prize money.

Women's tennis is exceptional in that it is virtually the only sport, where female athletes are able to draw large audiences and very high pay. American basketball is also well paid but has a much larger gender pay gap. US$21 million is said to be a typical annual salary in the NBA, whereas in the WNBA it is only US$105,500. The vast majority of other women's sports struggle to fill a stadium or attract worthwhile pay.

One possible solution to issues of gender equity in sport would be to make all sports competitions unisex, with prize money and other conditions totally based on audience demand and competition on the sports field.

The main problem with this option is that, based on research published in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, women would be uncompetitive and end up with even less success/money than they currently do. According to these data, the mean gender gap in sports performance is 10.7% for running performances, 17.5% for jumps, 8.9% for swimming races, 7.0% for speed skating and 8.7% in cycling. Further evidencesuggests that, even though female sports records are regularly being broken, so too are the men's, so that the average sports performance gap of about 10 per cent between men and women is not narrowing.

Even in sports such as snooker anddarts, where skill is more important than strength, men are near totally dominant. Women are allowed to enter and compete alongside men at world snooker championships, provided they qualify, and there are also separate women's championships. Steve Davis (six-time world snooker champion) does not expect to ever see a woman compete in the final stages of the World Snooker Championship. Reanne Evans (who has won the Ladies World Championship for 10 successive years and was handed a wildcard to the World Snooker Tour for 2010-11 but failed to win a match) agreed. "I just think maybe men find it easier to focus on one thing at one time", she said.

One of the few field sports where females and males compete against each other as near equals is horse racing. Michelle Payne in 2015 was the first woman to ride a Melbourne Cup winner, and horses like Makybe Diva and Black Caviar were notable champion female horses. These achievements, however, need to be kept in perspective. 90 per cent of winning Melbourne Cup horses have been male. In Britain, 67 per cent of winning thoroughbreds are male, and in America, only three fillies have won the Kentucky Derby in its 138-year-history.

Currently, male and female Olympians compete head-to-head only in equestrianand sailing events. Men dominate the mixed sailing events, and in equestrian they dominate show-jumping and eventing. Women have been improving overall in equestrian but they have only truly been competitive in dressage, where females have recently won most of the medals.

The bottom line overall appears to be that (with rare exceptions) women can be competitive in sport, only if gender segregated competitions are continued.

To return to tennis, the 2015 winners of the US Open Singles (both Men's and Women's) each received prize money of US$3.3 million each. Men's doubles and the women's doubles winners received US$550,000 per team but the winning mixed doubles team received only US$150,000! Women's events are only the best of three sets but leading female tennis players say they are willing to play the best of five, if required. Officials don't seek this change because it would drag out the duration of tournaments, and there is more demand to watch the men.

If you look at ATP and WTA tours, where men and women tennis players have separate tournaments, the relative prize money is remarkably different. The women's tour has 31 independent tournaments for a total pool of $24.6 million and an average $794,000. The men have 51 individual tournaments with a total pool $65 million for an average of $1.29 million prize money. Women's tennis, when left to its own devices, can generate only a fraction of the prize money that the men can attract.

Prize money is only part of the story.

Overall, the world's 12 highest-paid tennis players (according to Forbes magazine) made a combined $71 million in prize money between June 2014 and June 2015. The big money, however, was off the court, where they made $216 million from endorsements and appearances. The highest earning male (Federer) earned two and a half times that of the highest earning female (Sharapova). Amongst the women, glamour was valued highly. Maria Sharapova (US$23 million) earned nearly twice as much as Serena Williams (US$13 million), though Williams has subsequently overtaken Sharapova since the latter's suspension. In 2002 Anna Kournikova was reportedly making $10 million a year in endorsements, even though she had never won a professional singles tournament.

Ticket prices are another indicator of the market value of women's tennis. At Wimbledon, a percentage of seats are reserved for debenture holders (only debenture holders are legally permitted to on-sell their tickets to third parties). One leading reseller at the time of writing was offering centre court tickets for the 2016 Gentlemen's Final for £2850 compared to £875 for the Ladies Final. For the US Open finals at the much larger Arthur Ashe Stadium, prices are cheaper but tickets for the Men's Tennis Final are generally more expensive (often about double those for the women's).

Raymond Moore (tennis tournament director at Indian Wells) last March caused a huge controversy when he said that "lady players" were riding on the coat-tails of men's tennis and that if he was a female player, he would "go down every night on my knees and thank God that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born, because they have carried this sport." Serena Williams slammed his remarks, and Martina Navratilova called for women to boycott the prestigious event, if 69-year-old Moore remained in charge. Moore subsequently retracted his comments, which he said were in "extremely poor taste and erroneous". He later resigned (under pressure?).

Novak Djokovic initially said in response that the men's game should fight for more prize money than the women. "I think that our men's tennis world, our ATP world, should fight for more because the stats are showing that we have much more spectators". Djokovic subsequently retracted and apologised saying "I never had an issue with equality in gender or sport or other areas of life,.... I feel very sorry if I hurt my female colleague tennis players. I have a huge respect for all of them." Many thought this apology insincere and that it was made for purely commercial reasons.

There is pressure to show more women's sport on television. The BBC Trust wants more attention to the women's matches at this year's Wimbledon, after a complaint that 76 per cent of the broadcaster's 2015 coverage focused on men's matches. (Men's matches last over 50 per cent longer on average, so 76 per cent is not really that high.)

Bill Shorten recently highlighted that only 7 per cent of sports coverage on Australian television was dedicated to women's sports. To counter this he announced that a Labor government would fund an extra 500 hours of live women's sports coverage on ABC television and online at a cost of $21 million. "We are doing this because we believe that our women athletes deserve comparable coverage to our male athletes," Mr Shorten said.

Sports minister Sussan Ley and Australian Sports Commission chairman John Wylie earlier this year had written to sports organisations warning that there seemed to be no defensible reason why male and female athletes should be treated differently on travel conditions (e.g. professional men's teams travelling business class and women's teams in the same sport going economy). The Australian Government threatened to stop funding sports, that don't adopt a "gender-neutral travel policy" for teams travelling to major international events.

In all this, women's lobbyists and politicians seeking the women's vote seem to have forgotten accepted principles. The chief of these involves mandating equal pay and conditions only for "work of equal value". Professional women athletes almost always fall short of men both in terms of physical performance on the sports field and in terms of dollar value in the spectator and media marketplaces. Equal prize money, equal media exposure or celebrity travel conditions therefore seem hardly justified. Commercial reality is that not all professional players (even those in same team) are paid equally, and there is no equal pay (nor should there be) for juniors, veteran players or for disabled athletes.

Giving women athletes media coverage fully equal to male athletes may sound fair but would be financially unsound for commercial media organisations driven by ratings and would be unappealing to viewers. It might not matter much for the ABC (which in any case can't afford the rights to high profile male sports events).

In the amateur sphere, females are entitled to their fair share of funding and other assistance. In respect of travel, government sponsored athletes attending international events should all receive equal travel entitlements, - they should all travel economy class, unless there is good reason to do otherwise.

Netball (the most popular women's team participation sport in Australia) historically has not been regarded as attractive to TV audiences. The recent announcement by Netball Australia that it had reached a five-year agreement over broadcast rights and revenue sharing with Nine Entertainment, however, provides an opportunity for women's sport to prove that it can draw a major commercial audience. It is suggested that, if this venture is successful, our top netball teams and the national team could go at least semi-professional, so we will be able to see what pay they can command.

Overall, most of the so-called "gender equity" policies for sport should be called for what they are: special pleading and reverse discrimination. One gets the impression that equal pay policies for women athletes comes about largely from pressure through sports associations or from government rather than from marketplace sponsor decisions, and that it involves cross-subsidisation from related men's events. There is, however, relatively little sympathy for affected male athletes losing out from cross subsidisation of women's sport. This is because of a general perception that the pay levels of sportsmen are already obscenely high.

Professional athletes nevertheless are entitled to be paid what the competitive market determines, and media coverage should reflect levels of audience interest. In the fashion industry (which is dominated by customers wanting to see products worn by women) nobody would seriously suggest that male models should be paid the same as leading female models. [The highest paid (and recently retired) female supermodel, Gisele Bundchen, earned $47 million in 2014, while the top male model, Sean O'Pry, made about $1.5 million for broadly similar work.] Why then would anyone expect professional female athletes to be paid the same as the elite male athletes?