Top Earning Women Sports Stats

JonH · All-time great

Top Earning Women Sports Stats

christ · Futures level

RE: Top Earning Women Sports Starts

JonH · All-time great

Top Earning Women Sports Stats

christ · Futures level

JonH wrote:
Feels wrong that that should be the case - outside of sports I cannot imagine it happening in any other walk of life, presumably in other entertainment related businesses such as films, music etc the mix of the top 100 would be much more level than 100 to zero??

Whilst agreeing in principle, just doing a little back-of-the-fag-packet maths indicates why not: there are hundreds of sports. For the sake of argument lets assume that all of them have separately remunerated men and women: if the top two or three earners in all of the sports are male then you can easily see that this would tip the playing field horribly. Then when you add in the fact that some sports are ridiculously highly paid (e.g. formula one, boxing, golf, baseball, hand-egg, football) and they all appear to be the sports that are more male-player-dominated it is easy to see why women don't get a look in. The fact that women bocce players may be paid the same as male players (I made that up - this is not a true fact!) isn't going to impact on the overall statistics.

I think that exactly the same thing happens in entertainment, but the biasing factors are fewer and so the sample sizes change: if one were to look at the "Top 10 movie stars", then they are probably all male too: If one were to pick a larger number in sports (say "top 5,000 sports earners") then the percentage would stop being zero.

... but that doesn't stop it from being a nice thought experiment in imagining the glorious day when the "top-100" anything exactly represents the population breakdown for all factors - age/ sex/ colour/ creed/ persuasion/ eye & hair colour ...

... if only humanity were so even.

JonH · All-time great

You make some good points and I don't really have a come back other than it still feels a disappointing position to be in in 2018.

Oh well. The other interesting things in the detail are clearly how the US market dominates, leading to Serena, Sloane and Venus all being near the top; and amazingly how Sharapova still gets in the list , I sort of assumed many of her endorsements would have dropped away, clearly not enough to impact her in terms of her relative standing. Maybe she would be top of this list if she hadn't doped.

I wonder where Jo Konta sits relatively and, indeed, what the UK list would look like if prizemoney and endorsements where both included

christ · Futures level

I think that it would be fair to assume that Ms Konta is comfortable, regardless of where she sits in a "top-nnn" list. Indeed I think the same is probably true of the top 10,000 sports earners. I was reminded earlier today (reading the thread about Mr Edmund's last match against RCB) that Mr. Edmund had a latest-model VW Golf at world rank 554 back in 2013, and I think that I would consider even that "comfortable"! Earning £100 million a year to get into the top 10 isn't strictly necessary (nor even laudable in my view).

Edit: I now realise that I can come across as a little didactic - sorry about that. Please take the above in the spirit of a pub conversation - I don't claim to have the right of it, I was just sort of "chatting". Sorry - christ.

-- Edited by christ on Wednesday 22nd of August 2018 11:30:50 AM

JonH · All-time great

christ wrote:
I think that it would be fair to assume that Ms Konta is comfortable, regardless of where she sits in a "top-nnn" list. Indeed I think the same is probably true of the top 10,000 sports earners. I was reminded earlier today (reading the thread about Mr Edmund's last match against RCB) that Mr. Edmund had a latest-model VW Golf at world rank 554 back in 2013, and I think that I would consider even that "comfortable"! Earning £100 million a year to get into the top 10 isn't strictly necessary (nor even laudable in my view).

Edit: I now realise that I can come across as a little didactic - sorry about that. Please take the above in the spirit of a pub conversation - I don't claim to have the right of it, I was just sort of "chatting". Sorry - christ.

-- Edited by christ on Wednesday 22nd of August 2018 11:30:50 AM

I didnt take it that way, dont worry I dont get upset at stuff like this - it was good to hear your viewpoint. My views tend to come from an immediate emotional response eg "disgraceful" but I have always been very able to mould those views as people respond. It has been both the undoing and the doing of me in my working career!

Michael D · All-time great

christ wrote:
JonH wrote:
Feels wrong that that should be the case - outside of sports I cannot imagine it happening in any other walk of life, presumably in other entertainment related businesses such as films, music etc the mix of the top 100 would be much more level than 100 to zero??
Whilst agreeing in principle, just doing a little back-of-the-fag-packet maths indicates why not: there are hundreds of sports. For the sake of argument lets assume that all of them have separately remunerated men and women: if the top two or three earners in all of the sports are male then you can easily see that this would tip the playing field horribly. Then when you add in the fact that some sports are ridiculously highly paid (e.g. formula one, boxing, golf, baseball, hand-egg, football) and they all appear to be the sports that are more male-player-dominated it is easy to see why women don't get a look in. The fact that women bocce players may be paid the same as male players (I made that up - this is not a true fact!) isn't going to impact on the overall statistics.
I think that exactly the same thing happens in entertainment, but the biasing factors are fewer and so the sample sizes change: if one were to look at the "Top 10 movie stars", then they are probably all male too: If one were to pick a larger number in sports (say "top 5,000 sports earners") then the percentage would stop being zero.
... but that doesn't stop it from being a nice thought experiment in imagining the glorious day when the "top-100" anything exactly represents the population breakdown for all factors - age/ sex/ colour/ creed/ persuasion/ eye & hair colour ...
... if only humanity were so even.

Actually not all these sports are (just) male dominated. Golf and football have a lot of women players too, but their earnings are tiny compared with their male counterparts. The real dominating factor is TV (and media) exposure, and the revenue that brings. Women's tennis is the main female sport on TV, and that's why 8 of the top 10 are tennis players. Danica Patrick gets a lot of (US) television exposure too, whilst women's golf, football, cycling, boxing are still also ran sports as far as the media is concerned, and especially compared with their make equivalents.

-- Edited by Michael D on Wednesday 22nd of August 2018 01:03:02 PM

christ · Futures level

Michael D wrote:
christ wrote:
JonH wrote:
Feels wrong that that should be the case - outside of sports I cannot imagine it happening in any other walk of life, presumably in other entertainment related businesses such as films, music etc the mix of the top 100 would be much more level than 100 to zero??
Whilst agreeing in principle, just doing a little back-of-the-fag-packet maths indicates why not: there are hundreds of sports. For the sake of argument lets assume that all of them have separately remunerated men and women: if the top two or three earners in all of the sports are male then you can easily see that this would tip the playing field horribly. Then when you add in the fact that some sports are ridiculously highly paid (e.g. formula one, boxing, golf, baseball, hand-egg, football) and they all appear to be the sports that are more male-player-dominated it is easy to see why women don't get a look in. The fact that women bocce players may be paid the same as male players (I made that up - this is not a true fact!) isn't going to impact on the overall statistics.
I think that exactly the same thing happens in entertainment, but the biasing factors are fewer and so the sample sizes change: if one were to look at the "Top 10 movie stars", then they are probably all male too: If one were to pick a larger number in sports (say "top 5,000 sports earners") then the percentage would stop being zero.
... but that doesn't stop it from being a nice thought experiment in imagining the glorious day when the "top-100" anything exactly represents the population breakdown for all factors - age/ sex/ colour/ creed/ persuasion/ eye & hair colour ...
... if only humanity were so even.
Actually not all these sports are (just) male dominated. Golf and football have a lot of women players too, but their earnings are tiny compared with their male counterparts.

I got that, and the point that you make was the same one that I was aiming at. "sports for which the higher earnings list is more male-player-dominated" was a bit unwieldy even for me (and grammatically quite tricky to sensibly construct).

AliBlahBlah · All-time great

US Open qualifying, Liam beat Jay, Naomi beat Katie
3 total Brit women through round 1, only 1 man.
What is the only BBC headline about qualifying at USO after QR1 then?

The majority of British victories are subservient to the one male one - they are covered at the bottom of the male story.
Naomi's victory? An all GB match, a Broady winning it. Well, that didn't get a story the way her brother did in identical circumstances. Her success was buried at the bottom of the Kyle Edmund story - from a different event!

This is not an isolated case, by source, or event, it's the norm, everywhere. Is that market forces dictating the coverage, or a lack of coverage ensuring that the market never changes?

This is just a contemporaneous and aposite example of how this works all the time; by omission, subconsciously, and very often and increasingly by deliberate and explicit agenda driven design: maintain the status quo. It's what leads to Mary Carillo's well made argument's about the no-win WTA matches, where by in shared events, the womens final precedes the mens. If the match goes sufficiently long enough to push back the intended start time of the mens match, then, no matter the quality of the match, the WTA players are accused of delaying the mens final, if the match is deemed too short or not an absolute classic, they are deemed unworthy to share the same stage, and having given too short and paltry a level of entertainment for the money. The margin where by the WTA match can escape criticism if razor thin. Doesn't happen generally with the men. Take the Cincinnati finals last week, cracking final on the WTA, three sets, ebb, flow great entertainment. Mens final, Federer was awful, and Nole won a desultory match. Headlines the next day? All about the mens final, hung on the peg of a made up achievement that counts for nothing - there will always be a secondary, tertiary, quaternary or lower angle for the mens match that will get the headlines over no matter what the WTA offer. Mary Carillo makes this argument with far more skill, detail, and robustness than I have here.

When you come from a system that was geared by attitude, training, and belief to give favour to one thing over another, it is not surprising to find that that thing is favoured. The suggestion that these things now compete equally for attention, and that one has been found wanting by market forces presupposes that those markets at any point treat the two things equally, which they never did, never have, and never will. Chicken-egg-chicken.

In order not to be meaninglessly reductive about the subject, there's about 5 million more words to say on this subject, but I won't say them here, as it's a thankless and unproductive task to discuss complex, large social issues that demand complex, long answers on a platform that is not designed for it, and ill-serves it. The tiny insight of todays headlines just served as a timely chink of light onto it, as food for thought.

[end - by which I mean, respectfully, I'll not contribute again on this thread ]

JonH · All-time great

AliBlahBlah wrote:
US Open qualifying, Liam beat Jay, Naomi beat Katie
3 total Brit women through round 1, only 1 man.
What is the only BBC headline about qualifying at USO after QR1 then?

The majority of British victories are subservient to the one male one - they are covered at the bottom of the male story.
Naomi's victory? An all GB match, a Broady winning it. Well, that didn't get a story the way her brother did in identical circumstances. Her success was buried at the bottom of the Kyle Edmund story - from a different event!
This is not an isolated case, by source, or event, it's the norm, everywhere. Is that market forces dictating the coverage, or a lack of coverage ensuring that the market never changes?
This is just a contemporaneous and aposite example of how this works all the time; by omission, subconsciously, and very often and increasingly by deliberate and explicit agenda driven design: maintain the status quo. It's what leads to Mary Carillo's well made argument's about the no-win WTA matches, where by in shared events, the womens final precedes the mens. If the match goes sufficiently long enough to push back the intended start time of the mens match, then, no matter the quality of the match, the WTA players are accused of delaying the mens final, if the match is deemed too short or not an absolute classic, they are deemed unworthy to share the same stage, and having given too short and paltry a level of entertainment for the money. The margin where by the WTA match can escape criticism if razor thin. Doesn't happen generally with the men. Take the Cincinnati finals last week, cracking final on the WTA, three sets, ebb, flow great entertainment. Mens final, Federer was awful, and Nole won a desultory match. Headlines the next day? All about the mens final, hung on the peg of a made up achievement that counts for nothing - there will always be a secondary, tertiary, quaternary or lower angle for the mens match that will get the headlines over no matter what the WTA offer. Mary Carillo makes this argument with far more skill, detail, and robustness than I have here.
When you come from a system that was geared by attitude, training, and belief to give favour to one thing over another, it is not surprising to find that that thing is favoured. The suggestion that these things now compete equally for attention, and that one has been found wanting by market forces presupposes that those markets at any point treat the two things equally, which they never did, never have, and never will. Chicken-egg-chicken.
In order not to be meaninglessly reductive about the subject, there's about 5 million more words to say on this subject, but I won't say them here, as it's a thankless and unproductive task to discuss complex, large social issues that demand complex, long answers on a platform that is not designed for it, and ill-serves it. The tiny insight of todays headlines just served as a timely chink of light onto it, as food for thought.
[end - by which I mean, respectfully, I'll not contribute again on this thread ]

if only blob was here also to add their thoughts!

JonH · All-time great

Realise my last note may have appeared glib. I meant that blob had equally forthright and we'll articulated views on this subject and appeared equally frustrated. In posting the original message I was basically agreeing but couldn't have written nothing like the detail and constructive comment you have written.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Just to add my agreement.

Whilst it's true that, as chris t, says, the public can make their own choice and if they prefer to watch/follow male sports players, then that's fine; however, we are not free spirits, much as we'd like to think we are. Advertising, media etc. has a profound impact, both consciously and sub-consciously. And pro-maleness shows in many different ways, some blatant, some slight, as highlighted by AliB above. And this influences us, maybe without even knowing.

As Andy highlighted wonderfully, even the US journalists ignore the Williams sisters: the question 'who is the first player......' is taken by everyone to mean 'who is the first male player....' - the 'male' is seemingly unnecessary. Women have to be specified: 'who is the first female player....'; if you want both you have to say 'who is the first player, male or female,......' But 'who is the first player....' means man. Men are the definition, the default meaning of player.

Purely personally, when listing junior results (i.e. mixed threads), I realised that the tendency is automatically to put the boys first. I'd like to think that this is alphabetical (convenient, isn't it, that 'boys' come before 'girls' and 'men' comes before 'women'), but I don't think so. And, anyway, why should the alphabet matter anyway.
So I now make a conscious effort to mix it up, either randomly, or based on which gender has the more entries, or the higher seed, or whatever. Boys shouldn't come before girls simply as a default.

It's insidious how many different examples there are......

indiana · Tennis legend

Yes, I'd actually thought about this listing thing a little while ago.

When I list the titles each week, I put the men before the women ( though I think at one point I at least changed to putting women's singles ahead of men's doubles ) and junior boys ahead of junior girls.

In the other thread re top 100 players I list the number in order of MS, MD, WS, WD.

Whether generally / originally to do with the alphabet who knows but more I just followed the 'norm' when first posting without really thinking about it. And if I had from the start done these these threads with the women / girls first would folk be a little surprised and/or think I was making some deliberate point?

Men's draws and results will always be listed by sites before women's etc etc. I can't help but tend to agree that it is rather insidious. Or is it harmless convention?

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

I guess at least both of us have been aware and are asking the question, Indy, which is a good start.

I thought about keeping boys first just to be consistent, and then thought that wasn't a good enough reason.

I also tried 'gender neutral' a couple of times - just all R1 results, no distinction. But realised that was rather confusing, especially for those who follow male or female tennis only. (And the names are not always clear either).

So, just me, but I'm going to stick to putting girls first some of the time/half of the time, either randomly or when it seems warranted.
I don't really buy off on the harmless convention theory; the problem is that we may be 100% sure that nothing is meant by it, but it still sends a message, subliminally if nothing else, that boys' tennis is more important, and comes first.