Blog Post

Busting Unequal Pay Myth: Sports Edition

October 22, 2020 Thoughts by Cyrus

Today I saw this infographic on the internet, along with many comments from women habitually citing the “Unequal Pay Myth”:

Image may contain: 2 people, beard, text that says 'SYMETRA wish Sue Bird 17 Seasons in the WNBA TAEnO LeBron James 4 WNBA Championships 17 Seasons in the NBA 4 NBA Championships 2020 Salary: $215,000 Bonus for winning 2020 Finals: $11,356 2020 Salary: $37.44M Bonus for winning 2020 Finals: $370,000'

However, the explanation is brutally simple: athlete compensation is directly correlated with viewership + ticket sales + other relevant factors.. If women want WNBA players to get paid = NBA players, women must support/engage with WNBA = men support/engage with NBA

Really, women can only blame themselves for not supporting women’s sports to the same extent men support men’s sports 🤷‍♂️ Let’s look at the numbers:

2020 NBA Grand Final: Lakers V Heat: 8.9M average viewers
2020 WNBA Grand Final: Storm V Aces: 570K average viewers

Why didnt all women advocating equal pay watch/support the WNBA game? I can tell you if WNBA matches had 50M average viewers, Sue Bird would be getting paid more than James Lebron!

Unequal Pay Myth: busted .. Pay is correlated with viewership/engagement/support, not arbitrary unfairness

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