Flashback: #1 Tennis Player in World Defies PC Libs, Bluntly Shares Pay Gap Truth They Hate
The “pay gap” between men and women has been noted in many industries, including sports — although the reasons for it, how large it is, and even its very existence, remains up for debate.
In June, famous tennis player Rafael Nadal won his 11th French Open and stepped right into that debate, commenting on the pay gap between men and women in professional tennis.
Nadal argued, not unreasonably, that because male tennis players attract more viewers, and therefore revenue, they should be paid more than female tennis players.
After professional female tennis player Venus Williams told the Grand Slam Board that the French Open should offer equal pay to men and women playing in the tournament, Nadal said, “it’s a comparison we shouldn’t even make,” according to CBS Sports, citing an interview in Io Donna, an Italian magazine.
Q: “In tennis, should women earn as much as men?”
Nadal: “It’s a comparison we shouldn’t even make. Female models earn more than male models and nobody says anything. Why? Because they have a larger following. In tennis too, who gathers a larger audience earns more”.
😑😑😑 pic.twitter.com/rNqq0faoA3
— naturelle (@naturelle13) June 9, 2018
“Female models earn more than male models and nobody says anything,” he explained. “Why? Because they have a larger following. In tennis too, who gathers a larger audience earns more.”
The establishment media types at CBS tried to portray Nadal’s position as contrary to fact by quoting an analysis of tennis professionals’ pay by Ben Rohrbach at Yahoo News: “And while Rohrbach notes that men’s Association of Tennis Professionals World Tour events have generally ‘generated significantly larger audiences and more revenue than the women’s WTA Tour,’ women’s finals featuring Venus and Serena Williams consistently drew more TV viewers than men’s tennis from 2010-2014.”
The problem with that quote is that it is hand-picked from an article that presents data largely supporting Nadal’s assertion. For example:
“On average, though, the men’s ATP World Tour events have generated significantly larger audiences and more revenue than the women’s WTA Tour. According to statistics compiled by BBC, the ATP drew 973 million viewers in 2015 compared to the WTA’s 395 million, both excluding Grand Slam events.”
Sure, if the Williams sisters are competing against each other in a championship game, ratings are going to be high. But the average viewership of men’s tennis is nearly two-and-a-half times (2.46 times, to be precise) that of women’s tennis.
If you own a company that produces widgets, and you have one employee who produces 100 widgets a day and another who produces 246 widgets a day, all of the same quality that you can then sell to your customers for the same price each, are you going to pay both of these employees the same rate?
I hope not — and if you are, I’m going to start a widget manufacturing company and offer that second employee twice what you’re paying him or her to come work for me — and I’ll still be ahead.
A lot of Twitter users seemed to agree.
https://twitter.com/mt219310/status/1005503465496502273
https://twitter.com/KirkoryanArtur/status/1005682964641058816
https://twitter.com/MagnuRex/status/1005497362775605248
Unfortunately for Venus Williams, the free market makes these types of decisions. It is not based on gender, sex, race or age.
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