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

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?