The organizers of the Wimbledon tennis tournament made history recently by announcing that they will join the US Open and the Australian Open in offering equal prizes for men and women—all the way from the winners, who take home in excess of one million dollars each, down to the lowest-paying places. Last year, the women’s winner took home an almost trivial five percent less than the men’s winner, so the change is as much symbolic as financial—not that I’d turn down the additional $50,000, mind you.
Interestingly, the organizers had been fighting against the pressure to offer equal prize lists for years, on the grounds that women are lesser athletes—as “illustrated,” for instance, by the fact that women play best two-out-of-three sets, while the men play best three-out-of-five sets.
The history of that difference is enlightening. In the early years of Wimbledon, women played the same sets as the men, but some of them collapsed on the court, necessitating a shorter schedule. Of course, the collapses might also have had something to do with the fact that the women were required to play in corsets and clothe pretty much everything but their faces and hands. Now, the women will get equal pay for fewer sets than the men will.
At the Boston Marathon this year, the top women will start twenty-five minutes before the top men, and then compete for the same prize money. Unfortunately, the Grand Slam tournaments and the most prestigious marathons are not representative of all athletic events. Many sports simply have no events for which women are eligible.
At the opposite end of the scale from the Grand Slams and the big marathons are the women’s professional team sports. “The what?” I hear you ask. You know, women’s professional baseball, football, and soccer. Okay, maybe I’m dreaming, but why isn’t this possible?
While the stars of men’s professional team sports are signing contracts for hundreds of millions of dollars, the equivalent women’s teams either don’t exist or get paid travel expenses and a uniform, but not much more. The argument that women can’t be aggressive enough to put on the necessary show is plain silly, as anyone who remembers Roller Derby can attest (younger members of the audience should imagine a World Wrestling Federation competition on a banked track, with competitors wearing roller skates).
So why not women’s professional team sports, with salaries similar to those of men? Male player’s salaries are paid by the teams. Teams get their money from the networks, by selling the television rights to their games. The league negotiates the deals. The national TV networks pay billions of dollars to the leagues because they know they can sell advertising time on the games for even more billions of dollars. The networks are purchasing content that will attract viewers to whom advertisers want to present their ads.
As of this moment, no advertisers are offering to plop down the mega-bucks for time on a women’s sports program, so no network is paying a women’s league the megabucks for TV rights, and no women are getting ridiculous salaries to travel around the country playing team sports. As an advertiser, I’d be loath to spend money for time on any new sport—women’s or men’s—unless I knew there was an audience waiting. As a network, I wouldn’t commit my budget unless I had advertisers lined up.
The only way I can see past this situation is for the fans of women sports to convince networks and advertisers that they are ready to watch women play. Are we? If we’re not, we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves for the absence of women’s sports on TV. If we are, we need to let the networks and advertisers know.
