Equality vs merit vs markets

"It's the everyday pay gap between men and women, the 99.99% that aren't sports stars, that is the issue."

Exactly! This just serves as a distraction tactic when discussing the more important issue.

Also the WTA requested to play 5 sets. It was rejected. Not their fault.

I started a thread here to talk about equal pay for non global superstars if you are interested

it was not unfair to ask him about his opinion

It is unfair to criticise him for things he has not said

it may also be unfair to criticise him for the lack of coverage women's sport relieves. I am not sure what he could be doing to alleviate that

He was asked about it as part of an interview following his win at Indian Wells. Clearly it was unfair to ask him about it.

i have no idea if he was asked for comment, or if he phoned up newspapers to share his thoughts

fair enough you find it pathetic that he thinks he should be paid more

The bigger quotes are much more interesting. Possibly the media up to their usual tricks.

I think the outrage with Djokovic is that he chose to wade in after the comments made by the Indian Wells man, when he really didn't need to get involved. I also find that someone who earnt about $20m dollars last year, complaining about how they aren't paid enough compared to the best woman in the same sport (who earnt about $10m dollars last year) to be just pathetic.

Thanks for the wider story crappymummy and SpeakNoWords, those quotes do paint a different picture

his wife is a tennis player, perhaps he is extrapolating from what she has been though. I don't know.

He is certainly not suggesting women should be paid less, or are worth less or are less athletic than men

What about the rest of what he said:

^"I have tremendous respect for what women in global sport are doing and achieving. Their bodies are much different to men’s bodies. They have to go through a lot of different things that we don’t have to go through. You know, the hormones and different stuff, we don’t need to go into details.

I have great admiration and respect for them to be able to fight on such a high level. Many of them have to sacrifice for certain periods of time, the family time or decisions that they make on their own bodies in order to play tennis and play professional sport.

I have had a woman that was my coach and that was a huge part of my tennis career. I’m surrounded by women. I’m very happy to be married with one and to have a child. I’m completely for women power."^

I find the crap about "hormones" to be belittling, tbh.

It's interesting, because what he actually said was

He said: “Obviously it’s a very delicate situation. Women deserve respect and admiration for what they are doing. You know, equal prize money was the main subject of the tennis world in the last seven, eight years. I have been through that process as well so I understand how much power and energy WTA and all the advocates for equal prize money have invested in order to reach that.

“I applaud them for that, I honestly do. They fought for what they deserve and they got it. On the other hand I think that our men’s tennis world, ATP world, should fight for more because the stats are showing that we have much more spectators on the men’s tennis matches. I think that’s one of the reasons why maybe we should get awarded more. Women should fight for what they think they deserve and we should fight for what we think we deserve."

At no point does he say anything derogatory about women, or belittle them.

Although, from the way it is being reported, you would be forgiven for thinking he had.

Interestingly, the other comments by the CEO of Indian Wells where he says women should bow down to men aren't getting half the attention or condemnation

redshoeblueshoe: "Sadly Andy Murray said the same thing as Djokovic a few years ago."

I was disappointed to read this. I found this quote attributed to AM in the Daily Telegraph from last July

"Because it’s not best of five sets for the women, it’s much easier to play singles and doubles, so therefore more chance to make money that way, because there’s very few of the singles guys that have a chance or a realistic shot of winning the event will be playing doubles here.”

Is this what you were referring to?

Sadly Andy Murray said the same thing as Djokovic a few years ago.

A commission based work place came to my mind when I was thinking about this this morning but I'm 100% sure it works. If ( and its a big if because I don't know) he is generating more income for the tournaments/ sponsors then why shouldn't he expect more in return?

Grimarse wrote - "look at it from Djokovic's point of view. Imagine you work a 5 day week, and your colleague does the same job only 3 days a week. Are you happy if you both get paid the same for doing the same work?"

Djokovic won the 2013 Dubai Tennis Championship by winning five 2-set matches. He played fewer sets than Kvitova who won the women's event. Kvitova played the same number of matches, but she needed a third set to win her final. I believe they received equal prize money. Was that fair? Will Djokovic donate part of his prize money for that event to a charity or to Kvitova because he didn't play as many sets as Kvitova?

I'm kind of surprised by this from Djokovic, there's a very wide feeling that when federer eventually retires, men's tennis will become a whole lot less interesting....Nadal too. It's generally said that the reason for federers popularity is due to people preferring his style of play. So by Djokovics own yard stick he should be paid less than federer and nadal....I would not be surprised to hear that he earns less than federer, but the idea he would win less than him is surely beyond the pale.

Djokavic just comes across as petty and fairly desperate to have a go at women players. If you actually look at his earnings for the last year, he earnt way more than Serena Williams last year, $21m versus $10.5m. He's earnt much more than her over his career as well, but yep, he's hard done by, bless him. Only $97 million dollars prize monmey in his career to date, I'd be sad about earning that.

A lot of people who are not knowledgable tennis fans witter on about women not playing 5 sets. To be clear: the only tournaments where men play 5 sets are Wimbledon, The French Open, the US Open and the Australian Open i.e. the grand slams + the Davis Cup, which is men only anyway. In all others men play 3. Yesterday, for example Djokovic beat Raonic at the Indian Wells final 6-1,6-2, a scoreline that is often used as a criticism of the weakness of women's matches.

Women players from as far back as Billy Jean King requested to play 5 set grand slams (because it gives a much greater chance of a comeback, as male players quite often do) and have consistently been told that schedules would not allow it.

In any case there is already a disparity between men's and women's prize money outside the Slams, with quite a large disparity between the ATP and WTP tours.

Personally, I do prefer to watch men's tennis, but there are many who prefer women's tennis.

It would be interesting to hear Andy Murray's views on this as he is a big supporter of women's tennis and has stood up for them in the past (as well as having a female coach).

Can we also establish that millions of men play football, and only a tiny proportion make a fortune? The disparity of pay between men is just about as big as that between the genders. You can't use UK Premier League wages as a median.

If you want to have all female sports on an equal footing, look at where it already is, and copy that blueprint. Tennis has a strong players' union, which is usually essential in raising the earnings of any group.

Sport seems to be a special case, not readily comparable with a regular job.
Sadly, I don't think even merit comes into it, it's all down to how much money it leverages from the pockets of the fans.
I recently saw an article comparing men's footballer's pay to men's rugby player's pay and the difference was staggering, for sports which are similar in length of match and, importantly, a comparison between men and men.
Female olympic sports seem about as popular as male olympic sports, but both are not highly paid.

The point is that the womens game is seen as an add-on, a side issue, to the "proper" sport of the men's game. There is no value seen in encouraging women into sports. Grimarse, do you think women's sport is valuable as an entity on it's own?

I think this might apply in more team sports, but not so much in individual sports. I am coming from a UK perspective, but successful sportswomen are very high profile. Jess Ennis, Beth Tweddle, Paula Radcliffe, Sally Gunnell, Denise Lewis, Ioanna Konta, Heather Watson, , Laura Robson, Kelly Holmes.....there are a lot of them who's achievements and success are very high profile. In fact, off the top of my head I can name more British women tennis players than men. I can only name Andy Murray and his brother. Team sports have a way to go, although the women's national football team (England) are getting there. And in the USA, women's football is much higher profile than men's, given how good they are.

Interestingly, this article states that the women's finals in the US Open actually had more viewers than then men's finals did:

www.cnbc.com/2015/02/26/in-tennis-women-are-on-top-kratter-150226-ec.html

It says:

"While there are still many more men leading corporate boardrooms around the world, when it comes to tennis women are taking center stage. For the last two U.S. Opens, the women's final scored higher TV ratings than the men's final. Now there's new data by a Nielsen-like ratings company, SMG Insight, that shows the global TV and digital audience for women's tennis rose 22.5% last year compared to 2013. This year those numbers are expected to grow even more."

It seems that the increased publicity from social media is at least part of the reason for this.

Is it? What about the number of people watching it per second? Perhaps then marathon would compare more favourably? Also, you would need to consider the number of spectators in the stadium compared to the number of people watching on the streets. In fact, most marathons finish in the stadium, so that would mean more people watch the marathon as it includes street spectators plus stadium.

.... Or, you could consider both events of equal importance/value, and offer the same prize money. In fact, in the Diamond League series of events, there is no marathon but I suppose the same points still apply to the longest distance race versus the 100m. (Of course, in the Olympics, there is no actual prize money for the medallists, although individual nation's olympic organisations do give bonuses for medal winning.)