THE NEW

ECONOMY

OF SPORTS

The Unparalleled Value of Professional Women Athletes

PART I:

Developed in partnership with:

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Uncovering the power of women athletes

“Women athletes have been leading community and culture in sports for more than a century. Today, professional women athletes are more skilled, competitive, and visible than ever before. However, still faced with massive inequities in pay and opportunity, women athletes must work harder and longer to achieve a fraction of the financial success of men athletes, almost all of it off the field of play.

In this innovative study, RBC and The Collective have teamed up to quantify the pay gap between men and women athletes while also articulating the unprecedented and powerful impact women athletes have over their fan bases. Out of necessity, women athletes cultivate a deeply loyal fanbase that is educated, financially empowered and willing to take action.

Investment in women’s sports can be the best dollar spent in sports today – and investing in the women athletes who influence fans, is the smart move for brands. The Collective, Wasserman’s women-focused practice, aims to advance the power of women and, through this innovative study, gives commercial partners all the rationale for driving significant impact through alignment with women athletes.”

Thayer Lavielle

Executive Vice President, The Collective

Investing in data to support women in sports

“As billions of dollars flow through global sports ecosystem, we continue to see the rapid appreciation in women’s sports franchises and league valuations, indicating growing interest from prospective owners, media partners, sponsors and fans. With record attendance and viewership, combined with emerging or evolving leagues, innovative partner strategies, and opportunities for advancement, it has become increasingly clear that women’s sports is good business, and good for business.

However, there is much more work to be done to continue to drive awareness, rights valuations and athlete earnings to ensure women are recognized in an equitable way. A key component of this is ensuring the research and data is available to arm key stakeholders with the numbers needed to make a strong business case to drive positive change in a sustainable and profitable way.

The RBC Sports Professionals division is proud to partner with Wasserman and The Collective to invest in an ongoing research series dedicated to supporting the investment in women’s sports across a number of important verticals.

Luana Harris

Managing Director, RBC Sports Professionals RBC Wealth Management

This study is aimed at illustrating how consumer sentiment and behavior influence the commercial value of professional women athletes.

Through proprietary data and custom research, we offer commercial partners (brands, sponsors and investors) new insights on the opportunity to drive impact through alignment with women athletes. We also provide perspective on how commercial partners play a critical role in the future of women’s sport.

About the study

01.

Revealing the profound impact of women athletes:

How women athletes influence fan behavior and brand metrics.

02.

Level setting on the pay gap:

How the market currently values professional women athletes, on and off the field of play.

03.

A new approach to athlete partnership:

Providing strategies for how to participate in the new economy of sports.

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Level setting on the pay gap

To determine how the market currently values professional men and women athletes, we derived athlete salary and endorsement income from proprietary financial data and publicly reported salary figures across the 2022 calendar year.

Our approach

Our data compares men and women athletes competing professionally across North American team sports and global individual sports.

On average, men earn 21x more playing salary than women athletes

Despite a recent rise in salaries and prize money, systemic inequities related to revenue, infrastructure and media coverage continue to drive major discrepancies between professional men’s and women’s playing earnings.

Additional considerations for women such as pregnancy, childbirth and aging result in a disproportionate loss of career earnings.

With the exception of tennis, where nearly equal prize money has enabled greater pay equity, the existing pay structure for women athletes is not reflective of game quality or skill.

Limited on-field earning means that

women depend on sponsorship and

endorsements 2X more than men do

Because non-playing earnings are critical to their success and sustainability, women athletes value corporate and brand partnerships tremendously.

As a result, women athletes are known to overdeliver for their partners through exceptional fan and brand engagement.

Yet, 90% of partnership dollars are directed to men athletes

Women are not only undervalued on the field of play, but they are underutilized and underpaid by commercial partners.

The typical compensation model for sponsorships and endorsement aligns pay to audience size and scale. While this approach maximizes revenue for men athletes, it fails to account for the unique value offered by women athletes.