The Business of Women’s Sports

Three pointer, home run, touchdown: all these are vernacular that are associated with the world of sports.  When you read those words you probably associated them with the image of your favorite team completing the action.  However, if you are like the majority of people, that favorite team most likely consists of only males. The disparity between women’s and men’s sports has been an argument that has divided the sports world for decades.  Everyone knows that women get paid less than men, they know that women get treated worse than their male counterparts.  And we somehow let this happen and are okay with it in the business of women’s sports. 

However, with funding for all college level women’s sports programs being six millions dollars under the single budget for one male college sport team, the disparities are starting to become harder to ignore. There is some credence to the argument that women shouldn’t get paid as much as men because they don’t bring in as much revenue in sponsorships as men.  However this argument is built on the assumption that women choose not to compete as often in televised broadcasts.  This answer couldn’t be further from the truth. 

Studies show that women receive less than 4% of the total media time allocated to sports. Even if women athletes wanted to expand their air time they wouldn’t have the chance.  The lack of access to media is a huge problem for female athletes and contributes to the inferior stereotype that female athletes are given. We can’t try to justify these disparities.  Women athletes deserve to have access to the media and the coverage that they deserve.  In order for this to happen they need the support of their viewers.  By showing broadcasting companies that we are willing and able to stand up for this cause is the only way there will be change.