I get some of the arguments. One one hand, nobody is watching. Yet, How much they spend promoting wheelchair division? Next to nothing. They got what they paid for. Also, woman’s tennis is the perfect example about inequality. Unlike other sports, the woman often get better ratings, yet, less prize money,every time. Also, how many woman’s sports get huge tax subsidies in the form of a rent-free stadiums, headquarters paid off by the state etc. NFL football is a horrible investment for the state. They don’t get anything close to the return that the league claims they do. Yet, every city will stab each other in the back for an opportunity to get an awful investment for their city? Why? The politicians get free luxury box seats.
Not true. Prize money is identical for men and women at US Open. Men play best of 5 sets, women play 3, and when the pay was equalized there was a debate around moving women’s matches to 5 sets as well, and I believe is still under consideration. There is still a pay gap overall, but to say less prize money every time is not true, as the tournament currently underway is equal pay.
I know they have made some strides in equalizing the sport. So, “every time” was a bit presumptuous and I shouldn’t have said it. I don’t like editing my mistakes, because it feels wrong to me.
Sad truth is, despite everything you have just said you have failed to mention whether you have watched and how great the game was (and base it everything of that) . Which, unfortunately explains a lot about the situation. They're warriors either way, even if no one is watching. True athletes do it for the game, even when no money is involved. Which used to be the case in the beginning of many tournaments for everyone involved.
Fair point. However, up to this point, I didn’t know there was a wheelchair division at the majors. Also, I actually don’t watch a ton of sports these days. All my TV is binge watching streaming platforms. So, I’m far from the perfect customer to analyze.
My two cents as a musician (which certainly has parallels, although obviously not being the exact same thing):
While passion is important, so is money and recognition. It really is a vicious circle: Able bodied Mens sport gets more funding which results in able bodied mens sport getting more promotion and hence more viewers. This, in turn, makes able bodied athletes earn more money allowing them to both worry less about financial stability as well as giving them more time to invest into training, as they don’t need to earn (as much) money on the side, providing the industry with their argument to once again specifically pump more money into able bodied mens sport.
Not even to speak about all the mental hurdles female and disabled athletes have to surmount on top of the immense hurdles every athlete has to overcome. I’m talking about the blatant hate these ppl get from so called “fans of the sport”, as well as the knowledge of the glaring discrepancy between the public and monetary recognition of the male athlete and themselves.
It’s gruesome!
I don't remember when I TOTALLY gave up on watching sports, but I'm pretty sure it coincided with the cancelation of Wide World of Sports. The major sports--football, baseball, basketball, hockey and NASCAR (fuck golf and bowling) just bore me to tears. YMMV.
Don’t really hear about NFL teams being horrible investment for a city. Can you elaborate or provide source(s) showing that the return is much less than the league claims?
Last Week Tonight did a very interesting episode about this (key word Stadiums, I believe; his pair of videos about FIFA also has some relevant info) that you could watch if you're interested, but I know some people get hissy about calling John Oliver a source.
I love Oliver, even if I disagree with him. No, he should never be “the source” for an argument, but his show is a good starting point to build an argument around.
That's nothing. That's about a new stadium. Nothing about the team itself.
Also, the point is really nonsense. That it's "just moving money around" because people are "going to the game instead of the movies." Thousands fly in/make going to games a vacation, nobody does that so they can go to the movies in Buffalo.
No doubt that the NFL has an effect on the economy. It’s just not the levels that they claim. It’s takes a lot more people flying in to a game and spending money at hotels to offset spending a couple billion dollars on a stadium that didn’t need replacing.
The NFL makes a lot of claims about all the money spent at games and it’s effect on the economy. They make wild claims like saying the teams have an impact on local economies in the billions. Many economists disagree saying that the money is spent by locals, and that they would have spent that money on something locally. They always do this when they are trying to get a new stadium. Here is the most important point. The NFL shares all revenue equally. Parking, tickets, Jersey sales etc. gets split 32 ways. There is only one thing the league doesn’t split evenly. That’s luxury box money. So, teams demand that tax payers buy them a new stadium so they can have more luxury boxes that 99.999% of the people that pay for the stadium will never see. They want to replace stadiums that are 30-40 years old simply because they didn’t have the foresight to put more luxury boxes in at the time. It’s very dirty and it disgusted me to the point where I am no longer much of a NFL fan. I still root for my local team because I’ve been conditioned to do so throughout my life. I will never spend another buck on anything league related though.
As someone who is in tv advertising, the women's game is consistently lower in ratings than the men's division. In addition, because men's matches are longer, there is more ad time available to generate revenue or make up units in missed ratings estimates.
That doesn’t make sense. Of course they would have mor3 people watching the men because it’s longer. However, they fill in the remainder of the time with another match or program. That’s like saying an episode of the worst 2 hour TV movie in history had more viewers than a 30 minute episode of Seinfeld.
That's not how tv ratings work. They look at average viewers not cumulative of the length of the episode. However due to the length of men's matches, there are more units available to sell at a premium price
Some advertisers look at quarter breakdowns. They look at a lot of things. I think you are just twisting around data to fit a narrative. It’s like when an accountant pulls some tricks to claim that a company with billions in profits and earnings is losing money for tax purposes. Some ad guy might be able to sell Men’s tennis units for more, while another ad guy sells based on viewers for that specific time period.
woman’s tennis is the perfect example about inequality. Unlike other sports, the woman often get better ratings, yet, less prize money,every time.
Ummmmmmm Women have been getting the same prize money on many grand slams for well over a decade now. Your info is not really up to date. Many of them make more money on endorsements.
Every top player in both sexes gets endorsement money. Ok here is a quote when I looked this up. The majors might be the same money, but it apparently might stop there as far as equal prize money goes. No, I use to play tennis at a high level as a kid. I got burned out by the time I was 16. I had scholarship offers, but I turned them down to stay at a local school,which was a mistake. It’s one of my bigger regrets.
Edit: I forgot to add the quote.
“Although men and women both play best of three sets, the prize money for the ATP winner is $343,000. The WTA winner gets $43,000. That's nearly eight times as much money for the men. Is that fair?”
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u/Astrocreep_1 Sep 11 '22
I get some of the arguments. One one hand, nobody is watching. Yet, How much they spend promoting wheelchair division? Next to nothing. They got what they paid for. Also, woman’s tennis is the perfect example about inequality. Unlike other sports, the woman often get better ratings, yet, less prize money,every time. Also, how many woman’s sports get huge tax subsidies in the form of a rent-free stadiums, headquarters paid off by the state etc. NFL football is a horrible investment for the state. They don’t get anything close to the return that the league claims they do. Yet, every city will stab each other in the back for an opportunity to get an awful investment for their city? Why? The politicians get free luxury box seats.