Should the amount of money an organization brings in effect the amount they play their players, regardless of the sex? Don’t know? Well, here is some more information: This website below shows the salary for a male athlete compared to a female in the same sport. “According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, the average NBA salary rose to $3. 17 million per player in the 1999-2000 season, while the average WNBA salary was about $55,000” (askmen. com).
So what about now? Well, The salary cap for the 2010–2011 NBA season is $58,044,000.
The WNBA’s salary cap is $852,000 per team for the 2010/2011 season and the average player makes $42,000. Kobe Bryant’s salary for the 2009/2010 season is $23,034,375. There is a huge difference in salary wouldn’t you say? And this is just basketball. There is also tennis, golf, and even bowling. All of which women get paid less. Ok, so it’s pretty obvious that man get paid A LOT more than women when it comes to sports. However, is there a good reason for it? Or is it sexist? Here are some of the reasons you see a salary difference: Attendance: far less people attend women’s sports compared to men’s.
When Seattle had a team (The Supersonics) attendance was twice as high as the Seattle Storm’s. If twice as many people are filling the stands of the NBA versus the WNBA then it’s no wonder they are bringing in less revenue. But it’s not just the amount of fans in the stands, it’s also a matter of ticket prices. The average attendance for a WNBA game is 8,000 people and the average ticket cost is around fifteen dollars. That’s about $120,000 per game. Averaging out to a little over $4,000,000 a season.
The Essay on Women Sports Of Today
Women and women's sports have made great strides since the mid 70's. Although, gender inequality in sports is still common in most sports today. Prior to the early 1970 women did not have teams or similar programs that the males had. In 1972 the government finally stepped in and passed Title IX of the Educational Amendments. Today women are given many opportunities to participate in sports. While ...
However, half of the WNBA’s games are away games so they really only see about $2,000,000 a year in ticket sales. How does that compare to the NBA? The average ticket cost of an NBA game is around $50 (a lot more than the WNBA) and average attendance for the 2009-2010 season was around 16,000. Double that of the WNBA. So that’s $800,000 on average per game. Times that by the 41 home games they play in the regular season and we come to $32,800,000 of yearly ticket sales per team. That is over 16 times the amount the WNBA brings in.
And that is just ticket sales. Far more NBA games are televised compared with the WNBA. Bringing in even more money. The average NBA team brings in about $15,000,000 in pure revenue, that means after all expenses (such as salary, taxes, promotions, etc).
The WNBA doesn’t even turn a profit. How do they stay afloat? The NBA subsidizes the WNBA to the tune of about $12 million per year. So I ask you again: do these women deserve equal pay? If they can’t even turn a profit and need to be supported by their male conterparts, than how can they expect equal pay?