The gender pay gap in sports is a well-documented issue. In most professional sports, men earn

significantly more money than women. One of the main reasons the women are paid less is due to how

their contracts are set up. The men follow a pay to play model where they are awarded money for just

playing and additional money for winning. Women are given a year long salary that allows them to miss

games and still get paid, but the money is very modest. In the United States, the average salary for a

professional male basketball player is $7.7 million, while the average salary for a professional female

basketball player is $100,000. In sports, both male and female athletes put in the same amount of effort

and dedication, so there is no reason why women should not be paid the same as men for doing the same

job. Raising women athlete’s pay would help close the gender pay gap, promote fairness, increase revenue

for sports organizations, and promote greater gender equality. While the NBA is 50 years older than the

WNBA and it brings in billions more in revenue, the WNBA has been continuing to grow significantly.

The pay gap also varies between different sports, like tennis, where pay is comparable, to basketball,

where players are on a whole different spectrum. Tennis players Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova and Li

Na are the only female athletes to rank among the overall top earners over the past decade. For women in

team sports, like basketball, they are getting paid significantly less than men. A CNN analysis found that

internationally, women playing in the 2023 World Cup earn 25 cents to the dollar of men. Women used to

rank more prominently among the top-earning athletes, but over the past 25 years, media companies have

spent billions of dollars on TV deals for live sports content which led to an increase in player salaries in

the major men's sports leagues. The WNBA generates roughly $25 million annually from its TV deal with

ESPN and the NBA's TV revenue from ESPN is 100 times that. Women are undervalued in almost all

aspects of life and closing the pay gap in sports would be a step in the right direction.