Little short Power Point on the basis of a thesis I wrote.

1. Salary Disparities
for Women in
Sports
Elizabeth Rockett
Women in Management and Leadership
Washington State University

2. Did you know!?
The average WNBA player
salary is only $72,000 a year
The average NBA salary is
$5.15 million a year

3. Rookie Salaries
The average NBA rookie who places first in the draft makes
$4,592,200 his first year of play.
While the average WNBA rookie who places first in the draft
makes a mere $49,440 her first year of play.

4. The maximum pay a
WNBA player can
receive is $105,000
a year.
There is no
maximum pay for
NBA players.
Currently the highest paid player in the NBA is
Kobe Bryant who makes $23,500,000 a year.

5. Why is the wage-gap so large!?
• Reason: No support base
• Explanation: The WNBA is not talked about in
the media the way the NBA is, which leads to
a smaller fan base and less opportunity for the
league to earn money for their brand. The
reason the NBA has so many fans and therefor
can pay their players the insurmountable
salaries they are paid is because of the
limitless media opportunities they receive.

6. WNBA players like Seattle
Storm’s Lauren Jackson
now schedule’s her
surgeries during the WNBA
season so she can continue
to make money playing
overseas where women
are paid more equally to
men.

7. Why do WNBA players play
overseas in the off-season?
Plain and simple, money talks.
Lauren Jackson averages to make at least
$1 million playing overseas a season verse
the maximum salary of $105,000 a year in
the WNBA

8. We live in a society where, as of 2013,
women were still only making 78 cents for
every dollar earned by men which is a
gender wage gap of 22%.
This gender gap absolutely
plays a part for women in
professional sports.

9. Now let’s look at the wage-gap in
the Ultimate Fighting
Championship (UFC)

10. Jon Jones who has
won the
UFC Light
Heavyweight title
multiple times has
an average pay per
fight of $400,000
win-or-lose

11. Ronda Rousey who
has won numerous
back-to-back title
fights as a
Bantamweight
Fighter in the UFC
only makes
$120,000 a fight,
but only $60,000 if
she loses

12. Notice the pay difference?
Some will say this pay difference is because
men fights bring in more viewers. But at least
within the UFC that statement would be false.
Ronda Rousey’s first Bantamweight
Championship fight verse Liz Carmouche raked
in 450,000 viewers via paper view. These
numbers were the highest within the UFC for
any fight they have ever had.

13. These viewership ratings were not just for
championship fights.
In the UFC’s television show “The Ultimate Fighter”
the latest season had women and men fighters, all
vying at a contract together.
When viewership ratings were released there were
791,000 viewers for the episodes with the women
fighting, but only 650,000 viewers for episodes with
the men fighting.
That is a total of 21 percent more viewers for
the women fighters

14. With the obvious viewership increases for
female fighters over their male counterparts,
why are women in the UFC still making less
then men?
The answer could be as simple as pay
discrimination due to gender.
In the UFC, the women are bringing in better numbers
then the men, yet still they are making less. Are the
women perhaps not marketing their contracts in the way
their male counterparts are? Do they have less of a fan
base on social networking that could be causing this?

15. The answer is no and no.
Jon Jones the UFC Light Heavyweight Champion only
has 609,000 Instagram followers, compared to Ronda
Rousey’s 965,000.
Jon Jones has 1,665,342 “likes” on Facebook. While
Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey has 2,145,686
“likes”.
Obviously the numbers show that if you put both
champions head to head, Ronda Rousey has the better
networking capability through social media compared to
her male counterpart.
Yet, Ronda Rousey is still paid less.

16. Now lets compare soccer…
Vs.

17. MLS (Major League Soccer),
which is the men’s league,
makes an average salary of
$207,831 a year.
The NWSL (National
Women’s Soccer League)
makes an average salary of
$15,000 a year.

18. Did you know the poverty line in The
United States is anyone making under
$23,283.
That means the average NWSL player
makes $8283.00 below poverty level.
While the average MLS player makes
$184,548 above poverty level a year.

19. By women growing up in an
environment where they are considered
less than, it leads to them not asking
questions and not demanding fair pay.
We as a society need to create a world
where we treat men and women equal.
Where there is no gap in pay for the
same job because one person working
is female.

20. To build long-term development of women, it
can only be made possible by equal
opportunity.
To generate this change we must work to
ensure that the programs created in
professional sports as well as amateur
sports are created equal and work to
promote women’s advancement.

21. • We must develop frameworks to follow and
analyze impacts that different decisions have on
gender.
• We also must form leaders in sports, such as coaches
who agree that women should be treated equal and who
do not allow any negative statements within their
organization to the contrary.
The moment we do this we can transform how
women are seen within societies bounds, we can
forge an upbringing for young girls where they live
a life without hearing justified sexism as a reason
they cannot play a sport. By establishing this
environment we can establish a future of true
equality.

22. References:
Visualizing the Yearly Salary of Professional Athletes, NBA Players Average $5 Million a Year. (2013, November
1). Retrieved November 20, 2014, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/visualnewscom/visualizing-the-yearly-
sa_b_4184716.html
NBA Salaries. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2014, from http://espn.go.com/nba/salaries
NBA Extends TV Deals. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2014, from
http://www.americansportscastersonline.com/abc
ESPN Signs 6 Year WNBA. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2014, from
http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2013/03/28/Media/WNBA.aspx
Viewership of Game 1. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2014, from
http://www.swishappeal.com/2013/10/8/4816530/wnba-finals-2013-game-1-ratings-increase
Pay Equity & Discrimination. (n.d.). Retrieved November 25, 2014, from http://www.iwpr.org/initiatives/pay-
equity-and-discrimination
UFC Salaries. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2014, from
http://www.mmafighting.com/ufc/2012/4/25/2975149/ufc-145-salaries-jon-jones-rashad-evans-payouts-mma
TUF 18 ratings. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2014, from
http://www.mmamania.com/2013/10/17/4850612/ufc-tuf-18-ratings-trend-female-ufc-fights-outdraw-male-
bouts-fox-mma
2014 Poverty Guidelines. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2014, from
http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/14poverty.cfm