On fixing women's sports (and their health in general)

If you have been reading the news recently & follow sports in any capacity, you must have come across women's sports & the pay controversy. I am not going to do a deep dive on what it is, the long & short of it is that Men athletes are paid godly sums compared to ladies. Ladies want justice. Internet trolls say they are trash & don't deserve the pay. Nobody watches them.

And sadly, while the trolls come from a place of malice & sexism, they kind of have a point. I tried to find the NBA & WNBA financials for a deep dive but they are not available so I will have to rely on second hand reported sources. Sticking to Basketball as example, NBA subsidies the WNBA massively & females get paid 8% of revenue vs 50% for men. And the WNBA is losing money. I suspect the same is true for other sports as well. And the protest is kind of misplaced by female athletes. They cannot be paid if they don't get the audience. Google tells me the difference in viewership is 8-10M which is actually less than what I'd expect since nobody I know actually watches women sports regularly. And let's face it, long time sports fans are probably not going to start watching females anytime soon. There's mainly 2 factors at play here:

1. Men's sports are more competitive as males obviously are physically at a massive advantage over women. I don't think women realize how much of a difference it actually is.

2. Culture. Men's sports have a long standing cultures of rivalries & followings. It creates a sense of belonging that simply is absent from women's sports.

So lack of audience=lack of revenue=lack of pay. It is simple. Unless the female sports get venture capital to fund them, the salaries are probably never catching up to males. They can't. It is same as fashion industry. Men don't get paid as much as women since fashion is more female coded & followed.

And therein lies the answer & why I am writing this in the first place. To ask the leagues to pay women athletes is misplaced. Though it does get some marketing done & some eyes to watch female sports, I believe a marketing push is needed for women. It is time we start marketing sports like basketball & football to young females. Instead of pushing some hot model advertising makeup on Instagram, we need to make it cool for women to idolize & follow female athletes like Alexia Putellas, Marta, Caitlin Clark, Serena Williams etc. Push young girls into sports, show them videos of women doing cool stuff. Let's face it, male audience is probably not coming to watch in troves. Find a female audience & create a culture of rivalry between women's teams like men. I want to see females come up with banter & insults like we do for men's sports. I am no marketing expert, I don't know how to do it. Or if culture can be changed massively. Women's sports are growing but I am unsure if it will ever catch up. We need to push the right role models for young girls, maybe make athletic dolls or something. I have tried to get my female friends interested in sports but have been shot down. Maybe because they are too coded in whatever. Or it is just not "cool" or "trendy". Let's change that. It is better for sports & better for women's mental & physical health. It is 2025. Until then, all pushes for more pay are simply pointless.