Wimbledon ditches tradition: Women to get paid same as men

mca47 wrote:

The men still bring in more money and have a much larger following.

Really? I don't know anyone who watches men's tennis. I know LOTS of men who watch women's tennis. Not that I think the tennis has anything to do with it.

Hey here's an interesting read no matter which side that you are on...

http://popsport.blogspot.com

Uncle Leo wrote:

Well this is the topic I was getting at. I don't know who brings in more money or has a larger following, but I have a sense that the women have caught the men. Right now, Federer needs a Conners to his McEnroe. I feel like you see more women on commercials (which tends to reflect on popularity).

But I have no quantifiable evidence.

As I said in my previous post, men have a much larger audience than women. The WTA tour is always in trouble with finding sponsors, because very few tournaments have massive attendance. See in tennis there are three or four kinds of tournament. The bigger the prize, the larger the relevance of the tournament. So unless you have a tournament where Sharapova, Henin, Clijsters, Hingis, Vaidisova or the Williams sisters are playing, chances are the tournament will be half empty the whole week. In general, men's tennis is much more exciting. Yes, Federer wins (almost) all the finals, but all men's matches are tight, fought till the end and exciting. On the contrary, women's tennis gets interesting only in the quarterfinals (only 8 remain).

I don't have data or figures with me, but I follow both tours very closely, and it is an old issue. Last female masters tournament was even in jeopardy. WTA has to change sponsors every two or three years, whereas the ATP tour has been sponsored by Mercedes Benz for a decade and they just renewed ir for another one. The problem with WTA tournaments low attendance has only slighlty decreased with Sharapova (and people go to ser her for her look, although she's an outstanding player who works very very hard).

Maybe if you're a casual tennis fan you get the feeling that female tennis is more popular cause Sharapova gets all the headlines, but if you watch any gran slam for the whole two weeks, you'll se that most of the female matches are half-empty at best, except for the semis and the finals, which are usuallly packed.

About the relevant topic. When tennis tournaments begun (in the late 1900's) women in general were 2nd class citizens. As things changed for the better, well tennis didn't in terms of sets that and we kept playing 2 out of 3. So women nowadays are not in physical shape to play 5 sets, but they could train to do so, after all they'd be competing against women (obviously). So, even if I am a female and I'm the first to acknowledge the relevance of Billie Jean King for bringing more equality towards tennis, I'm still not convinced that it's entirely fair that women earn the sames prizes as men. Men have to train harder, play longer hours and much more disputed matches. In general when a woman gets to a Gran Slam finals she's played in average 9hrs of tennis (6 matches at 1.5 hours each), while a men has played 15 (6 matches at 2.5 hours).

So, that my 2cts...
(And yes, I'm a huge tennis fan )

mca47 wrote:

First of all the women in tennis literally play 3/5 of what men do. If this was any other job, you would NOT get paid the same. Women tennis players, for those that aren't familiar with tennis, play three sets whereas men play 5.
If women want to play 5 then I'm all for it, but until then I think it's crap!

then women and men should be paid same rate for amount of sets they do.

soulsinging wrote:

so we should determine things based on efforts, not actual work product? so in schools every kid that does all the assignments should get an A even if they get all the answers wrong becos they worked just as hard (if not ahrder) than the kid who actually got all the answers right? if you're trying REALLY hard at work you're just as entitled to a promotion or a raise as the person who corrected all your mistakes becos you can't perform nearly as well but you really TRIED?

very good point, this time i agree with you

the iron man is a ridiculously hard thing to do........ do the women do the same distances and if yes ..... they sure as hell could train to do 5 sets of tennis....

mca47 wrote:

:eek:
Are you being serious?

what was so wrong with my suggestion to illicit your response? I mean for years women have worked millions of unpaid hours as housewives, etc. so why would it be such a bad thing to overpay women for work that they are doing in a sport? It was just a thought anyway....