Welcome to the 2024 Pinkbike State of the Sport Survey. This anonymous survey is designed to highlight key issues and riders' perspectives on the sport that we, pro riders, and Pinkbike readers all love so much. We surveyed the best riders in the world to hear their thoughts, ideas, concerns, and criticisms on mountain biking in 2024. Now, we're breaking down what we've learned. We're now publishing a series of articles that break down sections of the results, and you'll see the results in full shortly. This year, we introduced the public survey, which will help gauge public views on the sport and should make for some interesting comparisons to what the racers say. Stay tuned for that. To read the introduction to the survey click here, and to see all the other currently published SOTS articles click here.
We know all too well that mountain biking is a male-dominated sport, but that's shifting over the years. We've noticed that from our experiences, as we've seen an increasing number of women on the trails and we women have felt less tokenized over time, and we can also see that in the numbers: In this survey's first edition in 2021, 39% of the respondents were women. That increased to 41% last year and 45.4% of this year's 108 respondents.
Female Pros Say There's a Pay Gap & They're Right We asked women in the sport whether they think there's a pay for professional female vs. male riders.
More than half the women surveyed - 55.1% - responded "strongly agree" to the statement "there is a gender pay gap in mountain biking." Another 34.7% responded "agree,: putting the total agree answers at 89.8%. Another 6.1% were neutral, 4.1% disagreed, and no one strongly disagreed. The detail I noticed about these figures is that they've increased this year, up from a total of 83.1% agreeing or strongly agreeing in both 2021 and 2023. What do we make of that? I honestly don't know. Does that mean that the industry is getting worse or that people are becoming more aware of its shortcomings? I think the latter, especially in the context of last year's organizational changes that put the spotlight on rider dissatisfaction, but it's fascinating to see at a time when we've all convinced ourselves that we're helping to move the sport in the right direction.
And - surprise, surprise - the numbers agree that there is a real pay gap.
The chart above shows what the riders told us they make. Women tended to answer that they made less than men in 2023. The biggest difference appears to show that it's harder for women to break into the top financial tiers: our one respondent making more than $500k is male, and those making more than $100k are also predominantly men. That said, it's not all grim news here about the pay gap. In
2021, our first survey year, men out-earned women at the $50k - $100k tier, too, while now enough women have joined that group that they're equal.
But even though the riders feel there's a gender pay gap and the numbers can back that up, there wasn't a clear consensus on what that pay gap might be. (Indicative of how little that's talked about? We hope this survey helps give riders a bit more understanding of their worth in the context of the industry.)
I do want to say that I think the lack of clear consensus was partly because of a survey design flaw. At least, I'll call it sort of a flaw. We asked a numerical
how much question with a short answer text box for responders and no specified units or structure, so of course the answers came in all over the place. Some fractions, some paragraphs, some percentages, some monetary figures in several currencies. Fascinating, but hard to group together. Below are some selected responses to "If yes, how much less do you think you might be paid than an equivalent male rider?" Please interpret them how you will.
 | 50% of the salary. |
| 200000. |
| I personally think that gender should be taken out of contract and pay. A lot of male riders get paid more than females because they are more valuable at the end of the day. They have bigger following and they have more marketability and they sell more bikes. The women that sell more than men get paid more than those men. |
| £10,000 give or take. |
| A third to half as much. |
| Around 50,000 dollars to my counterpart male teammate. |
| Half the money the male teammates get, not only the salary is half the amount but also the prize money. |
| I think -100. |
| 1/3. |
| As the highest paid female rider on my team (still not paid much at all) compare to the highest paid male rider I make about 60% of his salary. |
| Minimum 20,000€ less a year. |
| 60k less. |
Women Say They've Experienced Sexism in the Industry, But Not Everyone Agrees Beyond the numerical breakdown of pay, we also asked about their more subjective experiences. The majority of women who responded said they've experienced sexism in their careers: 65.3% responded "agree" or "strongly agree" to "I have experienced sexism in the sport of mountain biking during my career." Still, that's slightly fewer than I'd have expected and maybe slightly more promising than in previous years. In 2021, a similar 63.7% responded affirmatively, but were more skewed toward "strongly agree." When asked whether they've experienced sexism in the last year, that number dropped to 48.6%, suggesting either that those experiences of sexism are relatively few and far between or that things are improving nowadays. It's an admittedly small win, but I'll take it.
Women Overwhelmingly Want To Race the Same Courses As Men What might be the most widely-shared opinion in the survey responses is that the course should be the same for racers regardless of gender. 93.9% of respondents said they "agree" or "strongly agree" with "the course should be the same for all riders irrespective of gender," and another 4.1% responded neutrally, leaving 2% to disagree. (That's a single rider out of our 49 women.)
Year over year, that's a bit of an increase from our first survey year, when 86.7% of women said they wanted to race the same course as the men, with another 10.5% neutral then. What's changing? The individuals surveyed have shifted, of course, but attitudes seem to be changing too. Maybe more toward seeing women's capability and wanting to give them the stage for showing what they can do, maybe just through random chance, maybe a combination of those and other factors.
I think experience, too, has something to do with that change: In 2021, we were just starting to see some women's events emerge at a large scale but a grassroots organization level. Now, those events have been around a little longer, we've been watching women throw down on huge jumps for years, women are racing Hardline, and it's just a different atmosphere, a totally different snapshot of what women can do at the top of the sport. The momentum here seems hard to stop. As women progress, they'll want more opportunities, and those opportunities will continue to create the venues for progression.
Most Women Would Support Legislation to Diversity Teams Ideas on how to diversity teams have ranged all over the place, and one idea that's floated around for a while is requiring UCI trade teams to include female and/or junior riders. Such legislation would make it harder for teams to focus solely on the established (male, adult) riders and could help narrow the pay gap in the future, putting women on more equal ground to their male counterparts.
The majority of women agreed with the statement "I would support legislation to diversify the professional field. (I.e. an elite UCI trade team must have at least 2 of the following: a male, a female and a junior)" responding either "strongly agree" (24.5%) or "agree" (44.9%), with another 20.4% responding neutrally. Opinions on this topic seem hesitantly positive, with 10.2% in the "disagree" or "strongly disagree" camp, likely because there's no way of predicting the inevitable side effects of such legislation. There's also an argument to be made against the enactment of new rules at a time when World Cup organization is already in upheaval thanks to issues like the Warner Bros. takeover and financial turmoil throughout the industry.
There's also the question of simple principle: Should the bike world have more rules or more personal (/team/brand/whatever) freedom? It's tough to sign up for more rules when so many teams are already expressing themselves exactly how they want to, but there's also room for improvement, and we've seen some teams make such changes in recent years while staying true to their vibes. (Nina seems to fit in just fine with the Syndicate.)
How can we make the sport more inclusive? And then there's the big question at the heart of all of this: How can we make the sport better for everyone? Below are selected responses to the question "What changes would you like to see in mountain biking to make it more inclusive for women?" Note that I didn't include all the responses - I left out any that felt especially minimal or echoed other responses - but the common threads are that women riders want more pay, more transparency around pay, female riders on teams, larger competitive fields, better race practice times, and more media coverage.
| Increasing the value of having women on factory teams. |
| Larger field sizes. Requirements to have equal gender numbers on a team. |
| More numbers racing and inclusion within publicity and hype to the riders. |
| Not so early start time. Same salary. |
| A minimum salary for everyone, man and woman equal, and to speak more open about salary in general. |
| More development opportunities, more women making the decisions. |
| Less talk around how we look. Less talk about how we 'also train hard.' Less shitty race start times (like Saturday evening at some smaller races, or 8.30 in the morning for U23 women WCs). |
| More exposure in the media channels, more equality in salaries, more women in key jobs in the industry - team managers, mechanics, physio... a bit more transparency about rider and staff salaries. |
| Minimum wage for riders (M+F) in Elite teams and obligation to have a female athlete in every Elite team. |
| Compulsory woman on every team, minimum salary cap, equal coverage. |
| More than 10 in finals…..20 minimum! Less females are on teams so more of them are privateers so making it more inclusive for privateers in terms of available pit space at a reasonable price and larger numbers in finals will help develop the women’s field. |
| Fair salary, Fair training hours schedule at World Cup. Having our own style and not trying to copy men. |
| It's happening. Inclusion + opportunity and you see women rise to the table i.e. Hardline. Continue to market women as good strong riders and not just as "women riders." |
It was watching my daughter that made me change my perspective.
The first superhero movie she ever cared about was Wonder Woman. The most engaged I've ever seen her in a football game (pre Taylor Swift) was one of the first to have a woman reffing.
It's easier to envision our ourselves doing something when it's being done by people who look like us.
I volunteer as a coach for our local middle-and-high-school MTB team.
I can't explain how hyped my "too-young-to-join-the-team" daughter was the weekend we went to a race, and girls from our team swept nearly every category they entered.
Suddenly it wasn't just, "my dad wants to drag me out on mountain bike rides." It was, "I'm gonna be a girl on this team next year, and girls on this team win mountain bike races!"
Just about a third of our team's riders are girls this season, a new high water mark for us. I don't think we'd be there without past years of girls on our team who were fast riders, but I also don't think we'd be there without Rachel Atherton, Jill Kintner, Nina Hoffman and hundreds of other women pros for the girls on our team to look up to.
I also don't think we'd be there if we hadn't recruited a good number of women to ride on our coaching staff.
Which is all to say, if I was a MTB brand trying to stand out with my sponsorship dollars, I'd make a big f'ing deal about sponsoring women. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but because "attracting women to your brand" probably represents the biggest untapped opportunity in mountain biking.
Also, if you need a little good news to counteract the bummer of "women riders get paid less," I'll quote one of the older girls on our youth MTB team. They were discussing the best way to get a discount on bikes, and she said, "Oh, just tell 'em your a girl racing NICA. EVERYBODY wants to support girls racing mountain bikes."
I hope she's right.
Big yikes
It's sort of like how I don't really value "clean drinking water" until I'm out on mile 20 in a scorcher, holding an empty water bottle and looking at a stream.
Whether I wanted to be president, or a CEO, or a doctor or an extreme athlete, or a football player or a CIA agent or a fireman or basically whatever, I always had plenty of people who looked like me in those roles I could look up to.
I was skeptical of the value of "having people who look like you to look up to" because I've never really NOT had that.
If you're still skeptical of that concept, tale a look at the reaction every time Hollywood considers recasting a beloved character as a different race or gender.
Think of the response that happens every time there's a rumor the next James Bond might be played by someone not white, or not a man?
There's a huge outcry every time.
I don't think (most of) the people who raise those loud objections are deeply racist or sexist. I expect most of them identify with a James Bond who looks like a (much handsomer) version of them, and would be sad to lose that.
Once you realize the value of having role models that look like you (not to suggest that James Bond should be anybody's role model), it seems reasonable that you might want to help other people who look differently than you have that same sort of opportunity.
The other side of the argument is that there is more room for growth in the female market. Instead of a pro woman convincing someone to switch brands, there is a higher likelihood that she’ll convince someone to start riding and that’s an even bigger win for the industry. There are a lot of little boys at races that watch and get hooked. With the right female representation there is a chance to grow the sport!
In the last 15 years at my local DH circuit I have seen it grow from 18 women total to 18 Jr Ex women and at least 100 females total. Let’s also not forget we are only talking binary here, leaving a growing segment out altogether.
Bottom line, if you want a change, make a change, volunteer to coach females, sponsor a female athlete, or the easiest thing, cheer them on! I can’t tell you how sad it makes me when people start heading down the hill when the males are done instead of cheering on the females. So stay and cheer and convince others to stay too!
Did you mean 'Diversify'? Teach that AI....
JK jk jk, not trying to take away from your point. 100% on the money.
The person that said that is the most correct. It's not so much that anyone is specifically choosing to pay mountain biking women less, it's that most women currently bring their brands less revenue (by whatever wild metrics they use for measuring this) than most men, and many companies in this industry are choosing to determine pay based on that.
It's very different than, say, a software development job, or a line cook, or a pharmacy technician, where men and women in a given position are expected to create the same output and thus create the same value, and thus they should be paid exactly the same.
High level race wins, social media following and high profile video edits you likely can determine market value in relation to another rider. Personality and sadly for women, looks probably also play a part.
If you are winning world cups/world Champs have 150k+ following on insta and your own edits on redbull you should and likely are getting paid more than some men
Or could it just be that MTB as a sport is more interesting to men than women? Or that it is dominated by male athletes because their higher absolute levels of performance tend to be more exciting to watch and therefore they tend to sell more stuff?
But as far as Pro sport goes - it's all about views. Can't get equal salary if there is 10 times less people watching you riding.
Is there any successful female sport with huge viewership and equal salaries? And I mean one that doesn't include tight closes and skin exposed. Are women even watching sports? As much as I would like to I do not see how female athletes can be paid same unless it's forced somehow
Women's sports can in fact draw a similar viewership to men's sports given they are advertised and marketed the same amount, and the players are supported the same amount.
Arguing that women's sports should be paid less until they make the same amount as men's sports is the same as saying an slower F1 team should have to race with a smaller engine until they are as fast as the top teams... It logically makes zero sense as the engine itself is what gets you the top speed.
Marketing and funding is the engine of sports. Pay the players more, hype up the games more, and you get more profit.
16.1 million people tuned into the Women's collegiate basketball championship. The men's championship drew 15.1 million viewers.
The reason is largely because the Women's games were advertised similarly to the men's. This also goes to show that the peak of performance comparatively between men and women is irrelevant. People tune in to watch the groups actually competing against each other compete.
In mountain biking, the argument that women don't ride as fast or jump as high as the men is silly... the women aren't racing the men... they're racing each other. If the competition is tight (which is a result of being well funded and having a deep field) it will be good racing.
That's the 2nd most for any basketball game on ESPN in 20 years...college or pro.
I'll leave this here, Ronda Rousey from UFC on pay gap. I fully agree.
youtu.be/Jn_5HQ1AJi4?si=r441lGM2GQYUW0TK
The level of riding is completely different between the women and the men. There’s often a 45+ second gap ffs…women have zero style, zero aggression.
I can’t speak to how we would interpret their riding if we had never seen the elite men’s’ counterpart, but let’s be real.
People want to watch the best in the world. If the women were faster / better, people would tune in.
Not much to do with advertising hahah…in fact if you over advertise the women in today’s climate it mostly just looks worse.
I liked how the latest hardline event treated it. Support the ladies, don’t make a big deal out of it, don’t overly pressure them to progress any faster than they should, and leave it at that.
I don’t see a reality where the two sexes can be paid the same in sports where one excels over the other. I just don’t see how that could or would ever make sense.
Glass half full, the ladies have MUCH less competition.
Idk…you can’t go into these sports for the money. If you want money, go into consulting of some kind and ride for fun.
I think your argument makes some very strong points, but I would just like to point out that MTB sits in a sort of middle ground between:
1.The traditional big spectator sports
and 2. The alternative outdoorsy extreme (often solitary) sports
Interest in the first category is largely driven by viewers allegiances to a team, the stories behind the players, the competition between players, etc... even if the gameplay is not necessarily breaking new ground. Interest in the second category is more driven by seeing people doing jaw dropping feats. For example, there was a sick base jumping video posted here on Pinkbike. I knew know little about the sport, and nothing about the guy in the vid, but even still, I was compelled to watch the vid which I found thrilling. College hoops, by comparison, doesn't have that same intrinsically compelling nature unless you are really invested in it as a fan.
My point is that MTB is somewhat in the middle. So for fans of spectating XC, for example, it could be just as thrilling to watch men's and women's races if you're invested in the stories of the racers, and marketing and exposure could conceivably bring them up to popularity (and therefore salary) parity with men, as has apparently happened with college basketball. But for fans of the vids like Danny Mac or Semenuk are producing, or even vids of really transcendent DH race runs that are equally jaw dropping (even putting aside the time comparison to other racers and race results) there aren't the same volume of women putting out that content. I really dig Vero Sandler's edits, and a few other ladies, but I could count them on 1 hand, vs. a couple dozen men who are producing content of that level. Interest in and viewership of that content is a large large part of what's driving the salaries I think. Like, even mid pack pro male racers/riders are making videos of trying to jump over or off of their houses and whatnot.
Just wait and see what women are putting out for edits in 5 years now that they have a slopestyle comp and (fingers crossed) will have a spot to compete in Rampage this year.
It takes investment in the sport to foster talent.
Semenuk wouldn't be where he is if there was no men's slopestyle and rampage. He would have likely found a different sport that actually cared...
There are tons of amazing women rider's we'll never get to see because the industry didn't invest in them and they went off to other sports or careers.
Looking at the views of the Semi-Finals at Leogang and Lenzerheide that were streamed separately for men and women on the GMBN Racing channel on Youtube you can see the mens competition generated almost 6 times the views(33.250 combined for the women; 194.500 combined for the men). While this comparison is just a rough estimate and has little to do with the actual streaming views during Finals, it does show that for now women are being watched less than their male competitors.
Secondly, when comparing the instagram following of the top 5 overall riders in the three main categories dh, enduro, xc the Men average 196.500 followers while women average 63.800 followers(shoot me a message if you want the entire list). This again shows that women have a smaller reach and therefore not as good of an advertisement as their male counterparts.
As always, things aren't black or white, and there are multiple viewpoints to this topic. While most riders see the viewpoint of a female rider, who is working just as hard as their male competitors but doesn't get paid as much, what about a team manager/bike brand with a tight budget? Sure, athletes need to eat, but so do employees at bike companies. Looking at how the bike market has plummeted this past year, signing riders at a salary that isn't defined by their output and profit seems ridiculous.
Lastly, feel free to disagree, but I am borderline shocked by some of the suggestion of the women "Requirements to have equal gender numbers on a team", if I interpret this correctly and this person is implying a rule for teams to have the same amount of male and female riders then how the hell are you gonna accomplish that when you have 4-5 times the amount of male riders compared to female riders. Implementing these rules would kill half of all UCI Teams, in which case nobody wins.
Apologies for any misspells/errors.
Have a good night/day dependent on where you live.
Yeah but I could work harder than any of them and I’d still lose every DH race (vs fastest rider of the day) by a minute too. I’m just not wired to be a high level athlete, not sure if it’s genetic or environmental or due to the opportunities I had growing up. Does that mean that I should be able to work my ass off and get paid the same as Loic Bruni just because I tried as hard as him, even though I would never come close to his performance and never sell a single bike? Or is that just not the reason sponsors pay athletes?
Companies have to be able to survive in a capitalist meritocracy and if the numbers/revenue don't stack up then it isn't going to last. The company will either go under, or have to fund it through other methods.
We all want women to be supported in the sport and to have the same opportunities as men. I like seeing more women in mtb, particularly at the more extreme end, but it has to be able to work in the real world.
Almost everyone would watch the one with the highest level of riders. Right now that’s the men. If one day the women surpass the men then everyone will be watching them and no one will be watching the men.
The chart shows there is a significant pay gap with women on average paid more than men by the looks of it.
Could you display this with a box plot and p value?
The sample size for the women's field might not be large enough though to show a statistical significance.
The chart appears to show significantly more men at the bottom end of the chart compared to women.
There are more men at the top end also, suggesting the standard deviation of pay for male athletes is significantly worse than for females. This may be expected though as the male field is significantly larger than females.
Would be interesting to plot this v performance based on percentage from fastest time of the day. I would expect the gender bias to be even more biased towards women being paid more as the pool of riders producing the highest performance is lower.
I don't have the raw data so can't put it into minitab to analyse it, just observations from eyeballing the figures.
To be clear, I'm not saying that women aren't underpaid, or have an edge over men. However, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and there's no way of telling what these stats mean without more data.
There are also more men competing which will also skew the data.
As men I'm the 40 to 100th positions are probably significantly closer to women in 40th to 100th (if we compare similar data set sizes) then the data would be incredibly skewed, but. More men are closer to where they think they can't get better results and make a career out of racing as well as more men participating in mountain biking. Also... Are women more sensible and realise there isn't a good earning career in racing and therefore do other things outside of racing?
We really need the data cut appropriately.
Who at Pinkbike has minitab etc and can cut the data correctly?
I agree without knowing the number of respondents in each category, or some indication of salary v rankings. A regression analysis and the R number that comes out would be interesting. It would also be interesting to know how many of the ladies who responded are privateers v on a team? Clearly there are more men at the lowest end of the scale, is that because there are more male privateers than female? Are they junior and again whats the split between junior male and female responders who are privateers?
I less the entire dataset is considered then it's impossible to draw a who gets paid more on average conclusion.
How this changes in the coming years with smaller fields will also be interesting.
In most companies there are few very high earners, more middle earners and the majority on lower wages. There are of course exceptions to that.
I dont have mintiab on my work laptop at the moment (must install the 2nd last version and sort the licence out) and the data is exceptionally poor because.... the number of male responders is so low based on the assumption that there are more men in the sport (this is not just DH)!
Male responders 54
Female responders 46
Using the mean (middle) value of each of the earnings ranges.
Averages
Male $105046
Female $44728
DATA , sum is a basic mean*responders
Bracket...............Mean...Men...Sum.......Women..Sum
0-5000................2500....13......32500......4..........10000
5000-1000..........7500.....0.......0..............5..........37500
1000-20000.......12500....4.......50000.....10........125000
20000-30000.....25000....4......100000.....4.........100000
30000-40000.....35000....3......105000.....7.........245000
40000-50000.....45000....3......135000.....2.........90000
50000-1000000..75000...12....900000....12........900000
100000-250000..175000..7.....1225000...1.........175000
250000-5000000.375000.7.....2625000...1.........375000
5000000+............500000.1.....500000.....0.........0
DATAPOINTS......54...TOTAL 5672500...46.......2057500
AVERAGE..............................105046..............44728
If you plot this data in a scatterplot of the data... whish is what should be shown as the x-axis is consistently spaced and it really shows the difference in pay which is stark and doesn't show up in the column graph!!!
The big issue with the column graph and taking data from it is the upper values, there is a significant difference in 51k to 99k etc when you are up at the top end which makes the data have a large probability of error. The quantization noise masks the data.
Considering male athletes vastly out number the females it does suggest that they didn’t actually survey a significant number of riders
When asked whether they've experienced sexism in the last year, that number dropped to 48.6%, suggesting either that those experiences of sexism are relatively few and far between...
Yes there are a handful of very good female riders but there are many more mediocre female riders that are getting product/money simply because they're female.
Would be cool to hear a good talk about it from the people involved if they could honestly explore a bunch of ideas without turning it into a virtue signaling contest.
1.) Pay is primarily based on revenue coming into the sport from male or female riders;
2.) Pay is primarily based on performance and men and women compete against each other; or
3.) You disregard the first 2 factors and just pay based on a desire to pay men and women equally.
Re 1, historically, this favors men because male sports tends to dominate women's sports in revenue - not even by a close margin.
Re 2, this would effectively result in the death of competitive female sports as we know it.
Re 3, you could do this (and it has been done in some cases - see US soccer's new deal, NBA subsidizing the WNBA, etc.), but 1 and 2 are the classic "merit based" pay options so, if you go with 3, you are conceding that, to some degree at least, female athletes cannot get paid the same based on merit, i.e., it must be subsidized.
"Remember, with great money-making comes great pay." -Uncle Ten
One day, I approach my boss and say - I would like to be paid fairly; like Jim. My boss kindly reminds me that I build doo-dads and Jim builds widgets.
Now I'm at a crossroads. Here's some options for my next move:
1. Start building widgets exactly like Jim, achieve equal pay
2. Find another company or industry who will pay me more to do either the same thing or something else that I'm qualified for
3. Help my company grow the market for doo-dads, and be compensated accordingly
4. Continue to ask my boss for more money, even though she doesn't have any more to give me without negatively impacting the company's balance sheet
I choose option 4. And even though my boss values me, her hands are tied because she has corporate overloards pulling her strings. I am sad. I mistakenly think that I am not as valuable as Jim but I am wrong. It is simply my work that is not as valuable as Jim's work. I have chosen to leave my fate up to destiny and activism, rather than taking control of it myself. The world continues to turn.
6.2 Get replaced with a robotic doo dad maker that will pay for itself in a year by working 24/7.
Understanding the value you bring will always be more beneficial than looking at what car your boss drives.
It's a bold move. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't.
Just don't hold the line unless you want to find out if widgets can replace doo-dads entirely. As the famed economist Milton Friedman definitely once said: F*** around and find out.
Money is generated by fans, and advertisers. Entry fees are a revenue blip.
Organizers need to cut loose with a less insulting amount of prize money in general. Doubling the prize money up top isn't going to bankrupt the organization. I mean, passing a hat around the spectators for spare change would double that 10th place prize.
I remember a Vital podcast where Dakota Norton had forgotten to claim his $1000 prize from a 3rd place finish in the previous race all together untill the interviewer reminded him.
assets.ctfassets.net/761l7gh5x5an/4V9c9rytuA8x4UQqI2c1Bq/046de408ae9512b870539a5cadb8d995/8.2024_UCI_MTB_Financial_Obligations_submitted_to_UCI_Management_Committee.pdf
You could win a world cup and bring less value than 25th place rider who has a great social media exposure, photogenic, good at interviews and pro-actively promotes the brand they ride for.
But I assume your comment was tongue in cheek anyway?
Would you consider an athlete to be ‘waged’ or even employed in the same way as people are in more usual forms of employment?
Can you explain why there isn’t equal pay between ‘substantially equal’ male athletes, let alone male v female athletes?
Are you genuinely serious? As in no trolling?
Do you consider a sponsored athlete to fall under this type of ‘employment’ - has anyone brought such a case to bear against a sponsor in the past or do you think you are the first person in the world to consider this?
Or perhaps are you taking plain old shite?
Wikipedia nonsense.
True, social media popularity is a revenue based form of compensation and there are plenty of examples of female athletes making lots of money (exorbitant some would say - see, for example, the college gymnast Olivia Dunne) from social media popularity. In fact, I would argue that going forward, female athletes are at a distinct advantage over men in this space. Although some might question the ethics, morals etc. of it, from a purely shrewd point of view, social media popularity might be a place where female athletes should focus more heavily on if pay is the primary concern. It's already happening in women's college athletics after the NCAA relaxed its compensation rules. Again, it sucks from the "we can do anything men can do and better" standpoint, but there are ways to out earn (wildly in some case) male athletes.
If the metric of pay is based on athletic performance alone, then women will inherently lose against men due to immutable physical advantages that men have over women - particularly at the highest levels. If the metric is overall sports revenue, then men, historically at least, will generally win that battle too.
But, social media and the internet, as we know, hyper-segments the market. So, this has the effect of sort of cancelling out most other factors and just zeroing in on the individual athlete. It's similar to the "influencer" phenomena, where women are a powerful and successful force.
In this odd sort of way, no matter how hard we try to shake it, those old "stereotypes" persist. This "new" media landscape offers women a way to use "other" qualities (often times sexuality) to sort of "pad" athletic shortcomings; which is "regressive" as all get out in a purely feminist sense, but shrewd nonetheless. Social media proves that millions of people will happily watch "mid" to "upper-mid" female athletes doing "mid" to "upper-mid" things. So, Olivia Dunne is a competitive and talented college gymnast, but she's not like on any sort of Olympic track. But millions of people will watch her doing a 10 second tiktok dance. I think we know what's going on there...
Thank you
It is easy to find a woman that thinks female athletes are underpaid. It is much harder to find a woman that believes that and actually watches and supports that sport. The men get paid more because they bring in more money. Athletes have a commission-based career. More eyes on you, more money you bring in. People want women to earn more in sports, go watch them.
Slopestyle/freeride is different in some ways as it's more of an aesthetic appreciation so the jumps/drops/tricks being a couple of levels bigger does actually impact my viewing experience. If I viewed it just as a competition with the point of interest being who wins, I think it would be closer.
That being said, I actually love watching a good number of women free riders. They're infinitely better than me, but a tiny bit closer to what I can comprehend/appreciate. I like watching the top men, but they might as well be aliens.
I am not taking anything from your experience, people enjoy what they enjoy. I think you are in the minority though.
Its not a pay gap, its self employed people being paid what they are worth by companies they effectively contract to, perceived 'skills' have nothing to do with it.
To really make a change, you'd have to see a radical shift in the way in which the avg. woman watches sports. Men aren't going to do it for the women. It has to come from women. But why would that ever really happen? People like what they like.
The tough question is what do women’s sports offer the viewer that men’s does not.
I’m not a woman, nor do I have a daughter or pay much attention to this stuff, but I’ve noticed the same as you. Since my childhood, late 80s, I’ve seen the women’s sports stuff pushed hard. All of my friend’s daughters play youth sports, it seems to be extremely inclusive.
I’m not a basketball fan, but my grandfather was obsessed, and he preferred college ball as he claimed it was more exciting.
Does women’s sports offer anything men’s does not? I know the athletes themselves are more directly relatable to young girls who want a role model or a hero, but at the consumer / viewer level…men and women both just seemingly want to watch whoever is the best.
Ostensibly, this will even be true for a critical mass of women's sports fans. Sure, the tug of "identifying" with the gender will be there to some degree, but enough to where a good layup is better than watching LeBron James, etc.? Maybe for little girls, but that probably wanes over time.
At the end of the day, however, women could change this entire dynamic if they wanted to. As yet, it appears they just don't want to. Maybe that will change, but, if it hasn't yet, not sure why would expect it would by doing the same thing we've been doing really for 40 or so years now.
If men are paid more as they win more, they bring in more revenue to sponsors. Thats just the way it is. Like NBA vs WNBA. If people filled the stadiums, bought as much merch for a wnba team as an nba, the pay should be the same.
In mma, Ronda Rousey was paid well because she brought in a ton of ticket sales
Is that a man undercover ?? haha
Very interesting takes for sure, most of them I agree, but I would say more "equity" than "equality" especially on the wages (gender at the end of the day should be irrelevant). For sure the importance of women in teams should be the same to encourage more of them in the team and foster initiatives to support them from the younger categories, because in the end it starts there...
I know nowadays kids got medals for just finishing something they attended, no matter the place. But it wasn't always like this
Why are we wasting time with this
If we ever come up with rules that genuinely allow an even playing field I would support it but we currently don't have that imo