Soccer and Womens Players Agree to Settle Equal Pay Lawsuit, Andrew Das writes about the case and its implications for other sports: For six years, the members of the World Cup-winning United States womens soccer team and their bosses argued about equitable treatment of female players. The Yankees bat boy salary is more than my professional softball contract,NPF playerand U.S. womens national team member Delanie Gourley wrote in a since-deleted tweet. It's truly a pity that none of these true heroes are given the same recognition by society as athletes such as Brett Favre or Michael Jordan are given. I thought the main issue in women's sports was equal pay. I was wrong Gender equity in tennis has been in the spotlight for decades, stretching back beyond Billie Jean Kings threat to boycott the 1973 U.S. Open. Further confusing the issue, the NCAA does not have a consistent or fair definition of amateurism and allows some significant forms of financial compensation. The gap varies by industry, according to Payscale: the legal profession has the worst discrepancy at 64%, while arts, entertainment and sports comes in well above average at 94%. No Matter The Sport, Women Athletes Are Always Paid Less Teaching is one of the most economically important occupations because our future economy relies on the education of its youth, yet teachers are paid astronomically less than the average professional athlete is. Gender Pay Gap for Women Athletes - Inequality.org ], [Editors Note: The MLA citation style requires double spacing within entries. Lets take a closer look at the professional athlete salary statistics for three sports that have made headlines when it comes to the gap in professional pay: basketball, soccer and tennis. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate them into your classroom. Data analyzed from the Department of Labor showed nine out of 10 new jobs were going to employees with college degrees in June 2018. Consent is needed to contact you, but is not a requirement to register or enroll. The same goes for the military. Both teams have a salary cap, meaning each team has a limit on how much they can pay their players and some limits on how they can divide that pot of money. Women in male-dominated sports such as racecar driver Danica Patrick and UFC and WWE star Ronda Rousey ranked among the top earners in their sports when they were active. Furthermore, police officers, firefighters, and doctors save lives while risking their own for a fraction of what sports stars make. Women athletes work just as hard as men. The top WNBA salarywas $117,500 last season, compared with $37.4 million in the NBA. @Aussie7s champs at Sao Paulo, awesome signs on #RoadToRio. As professional sporting brings in a ridiculous amount of money in general, we should find a way to invest more in our female athletes and pay them the same as their male counterparts. When basketball player Stephen Curry signed a new contract with the Golden State Warriors in 2017,jaws dropped at his salary: a whopping $201million over five years. [24], B. David Ridpath, EdD, Associate Professor of Sports Administration at Ohio University, noted, The only amateur quality about college athletics is that colleges refuse to pay their players. Ridpath explained, The United States is the only country in the world that has a significant portion of elite athletic development and commercialized sport embedded within its education systems. In 2016, ESPN doubled their rights fee to show WNBA games, paying $25 million a year. How should the NCAA (or another governing body) balance college athletes sport, educational, and financial interests? Sorry, an error occurred and your vote could not be processed. The WNBA generates roughly $25 million annually from its TV deal with ESPN; the NBA's TV revenue from ESPN and TNT is 100 times that. However, players lived $778 below the federal poverty line and owed $3,624 in tuition. 3. College athletes are allowed to compete in the Olympic Games and be financially compensated, such as Joseph Schooling, a University of Texas swimmer, who earned a $740,000 bonus for winning Singapores first gold medal ever at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games for the 100m butterfly. Divisions II and III of the NCAA followed suit and the changes went into effect for all three divisions on July 1, 2021. If you are interested in equalizing athlete pay, or if you want to push for better compensation for players overall, consider a career in sport management. And the few athletes who get that far have relatively short careersjust 5 to 10 years to earn a living, compared with 40 or 50 years for other jobs. In my mind, absolutely not. There is no guaranteed money. 1, 2021), Colin Dwyer, California Governor Signs Bill Allowing College Athletes to Profit from Endorsements, npr.org, Sep. 30, 2019, Rudy Hill and Jonatha D. Wohlwend, Florida Law Will Allow College Athletes to Profit from Name, Image, and Likeness Starting Summer 2021, June, 25, 2020, Ben Pickman, Colorado Governor Signs Bills Allowing NCAA Athletes to Profit Off Name, Likeness, si.com, Mar. I am an editorial consumer intern reporting on sports and b-schools. Chicago, Illinois 60654 USA, Natalie Leppard ), and Major League Baseball (M.L.B.) A sergeant with six years of experience made $32,814. Usually, a team has one franchise player, who makes a huge salary, arguably more than his projected value, since he drives the teams business profitability forward. More than half the people in the United States make less than $62,000 a year. Take, What The Hell Are They Thinking? Below are the proper citations for this page according to four style manuals (in alphabetical order): the Modern Language Association Style Manual (MLA), the Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago), the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), and Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Turabian). U.S. Soccer and Womens Players Agree to Settle Equal Pay Lawsuit, ice hockey Olympic gold medalists, Canadian soccer pros and W.N.B.A. They may get leeway when it comes to their salaries, but the law should be overpowered by any amount of talent. [1] As of Mar. Consider that ten of the biggest outdoor sports stadiums in the world (excluding auto racing venues) are American college football stadiums.