We are having some friends coming over tomorrow for a barbecue, even though rain is scheduled. Rain is scheduled every day. But I was at the supermarket picking up supplies and while I was walking past with a full trolley, an elderly couple asked me for directions to the registers, as they were lost. It isn't a large shop.
Getting old sucks.
The plan for the grill is just to have some sausages and instead of the crappy Finnish ones that have no flavor or texture, I will get some made from some South African friends of mine. They have a small sausage business and they sell straight from their factory location. They also sell their products in a couple of local shops, including our local supermarket and I was planning on getting them from there this time, but the price difference is massive - three hundred percent mark-up!
Speaking about price differences....
While you might be forgiven for not knowing, the Women's Football World Cup kicked off today in a tournament shared between Australia and New Zealand. And as expected, the continual conversation of salary differences between men and women in football and sports in general has arisen. An argument that is quite nonsensical, as it isn't a one-to-one comparison.
Football, like most sports these days is a business, and the money that gets spent on players is driven by advertising potential. When it comes to football, there are far more spectators going to men's football games around the world than women and this happens at all levels of the competition, not just at the pinnacle of the World Cups, Euro and Premiere league. Most larger European cities have a local team that will get a lot of support, and even lower divisions will have more people attending matches than the top of the women's league. Obviously, this translates into ticket sales, but also into merchandising and advertising revenue.
As said, it is a business.
If women in football want to get paid more, they have to fill more seats at all levels of their competition. And this should be pretty easy to do, if women supported women's sport. After all, approximately half the global population is female and if those who want pay parity in sport actually went out and put as much into women's sport as men's sport gathers, it would happen.
The challenge is, that even women would rather watch men's football.
And this isn't to say the women's football is bad, but it is not quite to the same standard and like it or not, our human nature when it comes to sports entertainment is to see more of the best, male or female.
And, whilst we are talking about pay disparity, it is also good to note that in other ad revenue driven fields, it actually goes the other way. For example, the highest paid female model last year was Kendall Jenner, who earned 40M dollars last year. For some perspective, that is 5x more than the top 10 male models earned combined. The top 10 men earned 8 million together. And, like support for men's football teams compared to the women's, there is a lot of depth to the female model market, but almost none for the male models. There is far more spent on female models, as well as far more opportunity to merchandise, get sponsorship, be the face of and create business labels around the women.
Without Google - name one of the top ten male models.
Good luck.
Without Google, name five current female footballers who aren't from your home country.
What about three?
In the future, it is likely that the pay gap in football will close, if they are able to get fans to support consistently. But, that is going to take time and it isn't a question about throwing more money at the players. It has to happen from the ground up and it has to be that there are global fans supporting individual players. Yet, at this point at least, I am yet to see anyone randomly wearing a women's football shirt for a player. There are plenty of Ronaldo, Messi, Modric etc... so where are the fans?
I also don't see anyone arguing for male models to be paid the same as female models.
The entire world is driven by advertising revenue and without it, there is no money for most sports. There are plenty of sports where people are the best in the world at what they do, but they have to buy their own tickets to competitions and have sausage sizzles to raise money for equipment. There are plenty of professional athletes who have salaried jobs in other fields, because they don't earn enough (or anything) through their sports.
Should all athletes be paid the same, no matter the sport?
Of course not. That makes no sense because there is an interest factor, which means some won't get high-paying spectators. But, this is the same with football or modelling - there is an interest factor. There is far more interest in male football, just as there is far more interest in female models, and interest is attention.
This is an attention economy.
When it comes to pay disparity, it should be the same money for the same job regardless of sex, but this doesn't translate into sports because the salary comes from the attention the sports attract. Men and women might be playing the same sport, but they are also playing to vastly different sized audiences, and attracting massively different levels of attention and as such, generating enormously different levels of advertising revenue. That revenue is what pays the players and the pool of cash for the women's team is much, much smaller.
A local player in the third division doesn't expect to earn as much as Messi, because they understand there is a fundamental difference in the audience they attract - even though they are both men. Comparing the top of Men's Football and Women's Football is similar, it doesn't work. It isn't about the quality of play or the skill differences, it is about the audience difference and only when women's football is selling out games across all the different leagues, will the pays increase.
These are the top 10 highest attendances at Women's EURO games ever.
87,192: England 2-1aet Germany (final, 31/07/2022 – Wembley Stadium, London)
68,871: England 1-0 Austria (group stage, 06/07/2022 – Old Trafford, Trafford)
41,301: Germany 1-0 Norway (final, 28/07/2013 – Friends Arena, Solna)
30,785: Northern Ireland 0-5 England (group stage, 15/07/2022 – St Mary's Stadium, Southampton)
29,092: England 3-2 Finland (group stage, 05/06/2005 – City of Manchester Stadium, Manchester)
28,994: England 2-1aet Spain (quarter-final, 20/07/2022 – Brighton & Hove Community Stadium, Brighton & Hove)
28,847: England 8-0 Norway (group stage, 11/07/2022 – Brighton & Hove Community Stadium, Brighton & Hove)
28,624: England 4-0 Sweden (semi-final, 26/07/2022 – Bramall Lane, Sheffield)
28,182: Netherlands 4-2 Denmark (final, 06/08/2017 – FC Twente Stadion, Enschede)
27,445: Germany 2-1 France (semi-final, 27/07/2022 – Stadium MK, Milton Keynes)
These are national team games.
The second one on the list is at Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United. The stadium hold 76,000 people and when Manchester play, it is always 99% sold out. And this is the same for most of the games across Europe for most of the teams, whether it be Bayern Munich in Germany or Real Madrid in Spain. But, for instance, Tottenham and Arsenal also have 99% of their games sold out too. This is just the way it is in Men's football. There is currently, no comparison in the depth of support, even if a final here and there gets sold out in the women's football.
Note: Wembley, the massive stadium at one on the list, doesn't have a regular home football team. If Tottenham Men played Arsenal Men there, it would be sold out too.
Like it or not, while in some fields the pay disparity is worth arguing, when it comes to women's football, it really isn't. It is not a constructive conversation even to have. What would be more useful is talking about how women's football and sports in general can attract more fans to them, more sponsors, more excitement, more merchandise sales, more interest, more attention.
I know people (mostly men, but some women) who fly occasionally overseas to see football games in England, Germany, Italy and Spain. I have not heard of a single person flying to see a women's game. Why not? If salary depends on the audience, is it up to the audience to support without interest, or up to the sport to create interest to attract?
The global beauty industry is valued at $511 billion in 2021 and is expected to reach $716.6 billion by 2025.
That is why those female models are getting paid so much.
And for a little reference...
According to Deloitte UK's Annual Review of Football Finance 2022, the European football market is estimated to be worth €28.4 billion (£25.1 billion), with the Premier League leading the way with record revenues of £4.8 billion.
That is 31 billion dollars US.
Perhaps it is better to be in the beauty business after all.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
