Sports
Who heads major sports leagues and franchises in America?
NFL … NBA … MLB … NHL
WNBA (Women's National Basketball Association) … NWSL (National Women's Soccer League)
Sports
What does it mean for Women to achieve the Power Percentage in sports?
Who owns and manages major sports teams in America?
Who gets paid in sports in America?
How will female athletes achieve parity?
An economist recently remarked, “Sports are segregated by gender, at least on the field, in a way that no other aspect of our culture is.”
Given this reality, what does it mean for Women to achieve the Power Percentage in sports? Equal pay for athletes? Equal pay for coaches? Equal resources for programs and leagues? Equal sponsorship money from Nike and Wheaties? Equal airtime for men’s and women’s games in the same sport? Gender equality of ownership and management of our most watched and most lucrative franchises and leagues?
Women in management at ESPN and in sports journalism and among sports agents?
As a society, we cannot legislate viewership, or interest in, various games and contests. 45 of the 50 most watched TV programs last year were NFL games. This is a juggernaut. College alumni dollars often follow winning teams – and those teams skew male.
Professional sports.
Major franchises run and owned almost entirely by men.
Globally, women’s sports are $1bn out of $481bn total … owing to structural and economic biases.
Deloitte sees women’s professional sports as ‘an emerging industry,’ with huge upside potential.
Girls and women’s sports programs require additional support to develop.
Women’s pay – actual pay and corporate sponsorships – continue to overwhelmingly lag men’s.
Airing, broadcasting, and media rights for women’s leagues needs to increase.
Major U.S. sports leagues contribute upwards of $80 billion to the American economy, led by the NFL, NBA, MLB, World Cup Soccer and the NHL, along with women’s leagues such as the WNBA, USWNT, as well as sports such as tennis, golf and the Olympics. Sports scores get reported in hourly news, 90% of Americans watch sports regularly, and the Hollywood Reporter tallied 2019 viewership of ESPN, ESPN2, Fox Sports 1 and NBC Sports at a staggering 1 trillion minutes (almost 2 million total viewership years!), with 437 billion of that spent on “the NFL and college football’s regular seasons.”
These are the commissioners of the top sports leagues in North America, along with their tenure and estimated salaries (according to The Guardian, in March 2022):
Gary Bettman/NHL, Roger Goodell/NFL, Rob Manfred/MLB, Adam Silver/NBA at the Paley Center in Manhattan in 2017 (Source: Sports Business Journal)
Commissioners of the top sports leagues in North America, along with their tenure and estimated salaries (according to The Guardian, in March 2022):
| League | Name | (photo position) | Tenure | Estimated Salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NBA | Adam Silver | Top L | Started 2014 | $10m |
| NHL | Gary Bettman | Top R | Started 1993 | $7.5 |
| MLB | Rob Manfred | Bottom L | Started 2015 | $11m |
| NFL | Roger Goodell | Bottom R | Started 2006 | $63.9m |
| MLS | Don Garber | not pictured | Started 1999 | $5m |
| WNBA | Cathy Engelbert | not pictured | Started 2019 | Unkown |
According to Statista researcher Christina Gough, writing in March of 2021:
“In 2018, the North American sports market had a value of about 71.06 billion U.S. dollars. This figure is [forecasted] to rise to 83.1 billion by 2023. The market is composed of the four main segments: gate receipts (ticket sales for live sporting events), sponsorship, media rights and merchandising.
With more than $71 billion USD in revenue in 2018, the North American sports market is one of the largest in the world. On the global level and in the U.S. as well, gate receipts represent one of the largest revenue segments in the sports market. For 2018, some 19.2 billion U.S. dollars in revenue were generated through ticket sales alone in North America.
The largest revenue stream in the US sports market is the media rights market, where revenue is generated from fees paid by radio, television or internet broadcasters to distribute sporting events. Due to the wide availability of media devices, this sector has increased tremendously in size in the past ten years, from 8.5 billion U.S. dollars in revenue in 2006 to 20.14 billion U.S. dollars in 2018.
The sponsorship sector, which includes revenues generated by payments from companies to have their products associated with an event, a team or a league, has also been expanding in the past years. In 2018, an estimated 17.17 billion U.S. dollars of revenues were generated through this channel, with projections as high as 20.65 billion by 2023. The merchandising sector, which includes everything from team jerseys to branded sports equipment, has registered slow but steady growth, with projected revenues reaching over 15.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2023. ”
Deloitte predicts ever-increasing viewership, equity and ‘rising monetization’ for women’s sports on a global level in the coming ‘decade, or even a generation.’
Using the revenue categories of ‘TV rights, sponsorship and matchday revenues,’ Deloitte points out the strength and financial trajectory of women’s soccer, the WNBA, and women’s tennis especially. Deloitte predicts greater investments in each league and sport, better pay and conditions for elite female athletes, increased airing and viewership, and increasing brand sponsorships.
However, Deloitte notes that their analysis of an ‘emerging industry’ ‘historically requires a base level of a billion dollars in revenue’ to ‘be considered for inclusion.’
They choose to include women’s sports due to its global revenue increase of 45% in the 2011-2021 decade. Additionally, Deloitte finds that ‘women’s sports have mass-market appeal,’ with both female and male viewership of women’s teams on the rise.
Deloitte states the 2021 value of total revenue for women’s sports, globally, to be ‘well under a billion dollars,’ compared to a global total of all sports (men’s, women’s and mixed) which topped $481 billion USD in 2018 alone. (emphasis ours)
Economic value of women’s sports out of global total:
$1bn out of $481bn = 0.2%
According to the New York Times, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has been pushing for more exposure, more airtime and a larger fanbase (which currently ‘skews young and female’) for the 12 women’s basketball teams, as well as raising $75 million in investment dollars to “transform the league and get us on an economic model worthy of players on the court.”
2022 WNBA salaries range from $60,000 to $228,094. Benefits also increased significantly in 2020.
Women’s Soccer Scores Historic Pay Victory
In September 2022, the ‘US men’s and women’s soccer teams formally sign[ed] equal pay agreements’, according to The PBS Newshour. These agreements with the players’ unions will run through 2028, and feature ‘identical pay structures for appearances and tournament victories,’ including ‘World Cup prize money.’
The US Women praised their own organizing efforts, as well as the support of the men’s national team and leadership at U.S. Soccer.
U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone, said this about the historic agreement:
“I have to give a lot of credit to everyone involved, the women’s national team and their PA (players’ association), the men’s national team and their PA, and everyone at U.S. Soccer. There were so many people that helped, that worked together to make this happen. And it wouldn’t get pushed over the line without the men jumping in and being on board with equal pay.”
Note from the Power Percentage Editors:
The following information was compiled in 2019 and updated in early 2022. It details the background of the Women’s Soccer Equal Pay fight.
Sports Illustrated reports in May 2019 that elite women’s US soccer players have a fight not just on but off the field:
“The USWNT is still on top of the world, [having] won the World Cup for the third time in 2015. Yet despite their tremendous success, they have found themselves in not just a fight to be paid as much as their male counterparts, but in a fight for equality across the board. … On International Women’s Day 2019, the 28 members of the USWNT came together to file a lawsuit against the United States Soccer Federation (USSF) on the basis of gender discrimination.”
SI reveals many of the factors inherent in the discrimination: “The USSF continues to allocate fewer resources towards women’s soccer than to the men. From salaries to marketing and promotion, to adequate training and playing conditions, the lawsuit asserts that the women are getting the short end of the stick, all while they continue to dominate their sport.”
The 2019 lawsuit followed on the heels of an EEOC complaint filed by five of the US team’s top players.
In February 2022, the players reached a $24 million settlement with the U.S. Soccer Federation, aimed at leveling the compensation between the men’s and women’s players. The settlement includes $22 million in back pay plus a $2 million fund for post-career and charitable initiatives. In future, U.S. Soccer will pay men and women at equal rates “in all friendlies and tournaments, including the World Cup.”
Though the settlement is close to a third of the $66 million sum the players had sought, with this legal victory, US soccer evinces more parity than is found in other professional sports and leagues, such as the NBA vs the WNBA, or the NHL vs the NWHL. Of course, the NFL and the MLB are the most highly broadcast, followed, watched and remunerated of pro sports, and neither has a women’s equivalent.
The American Bar Association’s Temika Hampton, in an article in the Young Lawyers Division of Sports & Entertainment Law, asked the question Why Should We Care about the Gender Pay Gap in Professional Sports? Hampton points out that while “the NBA is partnering with the national ‘Lean In’ campaign,” the pay gap is still “staggering.” Hampton identifies the numbers in the leagues collective bargaining agreements: “The maximum salary for a WNBA player is $111,500 while the minimum salary for a NBA player is $525,093.” Let that sink in. Hampton points out that the combined salaries of the four top female basketball players, known as the “faces of the WNBA,” are less than the single salary of a bench player on any NBA team.
Some people counter that this is the simple math of the viewership and fan base of the respective teams. Yet “WNBA athletes are not asking for the multimillion-dollar contracts of the NBA,” according to the Women’s Sports Foundation She Network. Just equity, by percentage of revenue. NBA players take home around 50% of the league’s revenue, while WNBA receive a maximum of 22.8% -- of a much smaller pie.
Newsweek took a sport-by-sport review in a 2016 article, Taking a Closer Look at the Gender Pay Gap in Sports. Journalist John Walters reviews the gender pay gap in soccer, tennis, golf, and basketball. Walters discusses complaints from women’s athletes lodged against their leagues or governing bodies regarding the “alarming … disparity in pay.”
Walters further notes that “Tennis is by far the most lucrative sport for female athletes, and also the most gender-equitable.” Walters outlines the reasons why tennis operates differently. Read the article here: newsweek.com
Collegiate athletics
And what about College athletics? Title IX, passed in 1972, legislated equal opportunity and funding to male and female sports programs. Yet female athletes continue to receive millions less in scholarship money, and college athletics are inherently skewed towards the men’s teams.
The Atlantic did a long review in 2015 of the varied, and often non-intuitive, reasons for much of the disparity: What Gender Inequality Looks Like in Collegiate Sports/Despite some progress through Title IX and other policies, female coaches and players are still significantly marginalized and undervalued. Read it here: theatlantic.com
[Note: The Atlantic followed up later that year with a social media crowdsourced review of the viewership and broadcast disparity in professional sports, entitled, Why Aren't Women's Sports as Big as Men's? Your Thoughts. Access it here: theatlantic.com]
Yet consider the revenue that different sports bring into their colleges and universities. This Business Insider chart, backed by US Dept of Education statistics, tells the tale of NCAA teams:
Olympics
The Olympics is the closest of all large-scale and televised sporting competitions to approach gender parity.
Still, the New York Times reported on the ‘Not So Equal’ Tokyo Games of 2020:
“… a series of gaffes by officials and persistent gaps in the makeup of the IOC overshadow gains … [for example, the] president of the Tokyo Olympics Organizing Committee was replaced after he publicly suggested that women speak too much in meetings.”
Additionally, a creative executive for the Opening Ceremony body shamed a fashion designer, athletes who were nursing mothers were told not to bring their infants to Tokyo with them, and John Coates, the IOC VP, ‘ordered the premier of Queensland, Australia [Annastacia Palasczczuk] to attend the opening ceremony,’ while ‘crossing his arms.’*
*Note: The IOC reversed this decision in June 2020
The New York Times notes that many countries had ‘team lineups that had more women than men’ – ‘including the US, Australia, Britain, Canada and China.’ Much of these gains are due to decades of required funding of girls’ and women’s sports, such as through Title IX in the US. Yet in many nations, ‘Men enjoy far more funding, news coverage and opportunities than their female counterparts.’
BBC News reported that “by the time of the 2016 Rio Games, there were 161 events for men, 136 for women and nine mixed, including equestrian and one sailing race. This was the closest to gender parity the Olympics has been.” The IOC lists two men-only events it intends on extending to women by 2020: the 50km race walk and canoeing, while also identifying two women-only events; synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics.
However, much parity is achieved on the field and in the arena, the BBC notes that women in leadership roles is sorely lacking:
By the IOC's own admission, women's participation remains "low".
It claims some success - since 2013, more women have been appointed to the commissions that support the IOC - 38% of places are now taken up by women.
However, currently four out of 15 members of the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee are women. That's 27%.
Of the 135 national Olympic committees who responded to an IOC survey in 2015, only 11 had a woman president. That's 8%.
The BBC is quick to note that the US women Olympians are the majority of medal winners for the US – in Rio in 2016, US women brought home 61 medals, while US men brought home 55. More striking is that US women earned 27 gold medals, to US men’s 19. Overall, the United States topped the medal charts, with 121 overall – owing largely to female athletes’ dominance.
The BBC credits structural and policy factors that make the US women able to achieve equality – concluding, “And Title IX is credited - by academic journals and sporting bodies alike - as the reason American women do so well at the Olympic Games, because government money and resources have been spent equally on women as on men.”
What will it take for women to get into the Power Percentage in Sports?