The topic of equal pay in sport spans across many disciplines. While some sports do offer succor in that regard, the spotlight has usually been focused on the biggest and most marketable sports in the World like Tennis, Soccer, basketball to name a few.
Without saying Women are usually at the down-end when it to comes who gets the lesser part, and should be a no-brainer that they demand to be treated equally for all effort put into the various disciplines. But does a critical look at the issue justify a call for such treatment?
A quick look into these various disciplines seem to suggest more equity in individual sports over team events. Sports like Lawn Tennis for instance offers equal prize money for all the grand slams, Same for Athletics and the various Diamond league and World challenge meetings and so on.
On the other hand, team events like basketball (WNBA), soccer, Hockey to name a few have huge disparities in the pay grade between men and women at club level. At the international scene, there have been objections to this discrimination by some with varying degrees of success.
We are increasingly seeing fans rally behind players who have used their platforms to complain about or promote issues affecting them. With the increasing rise of activism in sports, it is only a matter of time before this issue is revisited once again on the international scenes of various countries at least. The issue though is likely to continue dragging on for a long time with little success if some fundamental questions are not taken into consideration.
The most important note is that competitive sports is usually a business. Like any other business, profit remains the focus. Till today I am amazed that the audiences devoted to women's categories of the NBA and MLS pale considerably to the men despite the overall improvement in style and quality of play in both fields. Marketability is perhaps the number one reason given for such disparities. While the players have a right to complain if they feel treated unfairly, I believe the effort should be channeled at looking at why market penetration is so low and how to better improve going forward.
I don't believe men and women should be paid equally for mere political points, rather a system that allows growth for the women's game should be allowed to thrive. This is especially true with team sports making these professionals visible and sellable. Nothing stops women from earning higher after all.
