NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — HowToBet.com outlines the sports pay gap and the reasons behind it in the recent article “Gender Pay Gap: Understanding the Gender Gap in Sports Pay.” The U.S. women’s soccer team has made international headlines with their campaign to bring their salaries and benefits on par with the U.S. men’s team. But the pay difference between female and male professional athletes is not limited to the country’s top soccer stars. In fact, the gap is even larger in many sports, and staggering across the board.
The article references a report stating that National Basketball Association’s (NBA) highest player for the fifth year in a row is Stephen Curry, with a salary of $45,780,966. Curry earns over $550,000 per regular-season game. By comparison, Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) legend Sue Bird earns the league’s maximum salary of $221,450 per year, or $6,900 per regular-season game. Bird’s salary is matched by just six other top performers in the WNBA league including Brittney Griner and Diana Taurasi. To reach parity, the women would need a 20573.27% raise.
The NBA’s audience and marketing revenues are famously huge, but HowToBet.com dismantles the argument that women’s professional athletes’ salaries are always objectively dictated. According to a report referenced in the article, the U.S. women’s soccer team brought in $50.8 million in revenue in 2016 to 2018, while the U.S. men’s team brought in $49.9 million during that time. Merchandise was also selling well, with Nike CEO Mark Parker remarking on a 2019 earnings call that the USA women’s home jersey was the best selling soccer jersey, men’s or women’s, ever sold on Nike.com in one season.
Yet, in the 2021 season, women’s players’ salaries ranged from $22,000 to $52,500 while no male players earned less than $63,547 (the baseline for the reserve roster). The average male player earns $398,725 while, according to the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association (NWSLPA) estimates, three-quarters of the women players earn $31,000 or less. Earlier this year, the NWSLPA launched a campaign called #NoMoreSideHustles to bring awareness to salaries below a livable wage.
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