Thanks to social networks like Facebook and Twitter, sports is being watched, discussed, scrutinized, and studied 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. A perfect example of this is the Thanksgiving holiday. While the NFL has televised a couple of games on Thanksgiving for decades, other sports are now using the holiday to showcase their leagues or teams. The NBA, NHL, NCAA, MMA, and PGA all have begun to schedule events on Thanksgiving for their teams and athletes.
Due to the around-the-clock availability of sports, it’s interesting to see how fans perceive their favorite teams or athletes. Another interesting way to examine sports is across the gender line – that is, how do sports fans perceive men’s and women’s sports? Do they think differently about male and female athletes, or are women athletes more popular than their male counterparts?
In this blog post, we will dig deep into the statistics to show you how people feel about sports from a gender-based perspective.
Male Sports Still Earn More Money and Viewers
Although 2018 was hailed as the Year of the Woman, studies indicate that men’s sports still outperform women’s sports when it comes to television ratings and player salaries. In fact, this issue has been openly talked about in professional soccer, where female FIBA players have very vocally demanded to be paid equally to their male counterparts, even though they do not earn as much revenue as male soccer players do.
However, the female FIBA players have pointed to ratings that suggest that women’s soccer has become increasingly popular around the globe over the past few years, which is why the lady soccer professionals believe they should earn a larger piece of the revenue pie.
Competitiveness Versus Progressiveness in Sports
Although women’s sports have become more popular in recent years, men’s sports are still more popular overall according to studies. Social scientists believe that one reason for the elevated popularity of men’s sports is that the viewing public views men’s sports as more competitive than women’s sports.
For example, a recent study shows that less than half of people believe that women’s sports are competitive in general, and 63% of people believe that male-based sporting competitions are more competitive than women’s sports.
Still, the future is bright for women’s sports.
More people report being inspired by female athletes than guy sportsmen – 36% of poll participants are inspired by women, while only 26% of people report feeling inspired by male athletes.
Additionally, women’s sports are seen as more family-oriented, more progressive, cleaner, and less money-driven than male sports.