Pro Sports Gender Pay Gap is Closing Thanks to the Most Lucrative Sport for Women: Pickleball

Al Bello. Getty Images.

Whenever people argue that women's professional sports leagues are treated unfairly because the athletes don't get paid as much as the men, we can all make jokes about it. We could borrow Bill Burr's line about how you know women don't support other women because the WNBA is the only league where no one caught Covid. Which is objectively hilarious, as well as pointing out the larger truth. The Economics 101. Basic Adam Smith stuff. Supply and demand. 

The Megan Rapinoes who fought to split revenues evenly between US women's soccer and the Men's team have never fully explained why, since they're 51% of the population, the don't buy 51% of the tickets. Or 51% of the merchanise. And aren't 51% of the viewing audience. I mean, who's stopping them from making the WNBA more popular than the NBA, instead of just waiting for Caitlyn Clark to play? Or to put it differently, why don't they support the cause of women's sports the way they do women's TV, women's magazines, women pop stars, women fashion icons, and the like? 

But my point has always been that there are some sports where the women's game is more popular than the men's. At the risk of being accused of always promoting my favorite sport, Figure Skating, the women's event at every Olympics is not only the main attraction above the men's, it's the premiere competition of every Winter Games. The same goes with Gymnastics at every Summer Olympics. Or have we forgotten how much Team USA and Simone Biles have dominated the coverage every four years for the last couple of decades? And for many reasons I won't get into here, the same is true of Beach Volleyball. 

But I've made my point. Some women's sports are simply more compelling than the men's, and that's where the big bucks come in. Which is exactly the economics of what has suddenly become the Sport of Queen's, Pickleball:

Source - Quick question; which sports league paid female players the most on average in 2024, the year women’s sports finally broke through?  

Was it the Caitlin Clark-infused WNBA?…  Maybe the National Women’s Soccer League, which has seen skyrocketing franchise values and vibrant competition among cities for the next expansion franchise. Or the Professional Women’s Hockey League, which launched this year with the backing of Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and Billie Jean King?

If you chose D, none of the above, you’d be correct. Because it is actually the pro pickleball tour, which paid out on average $269,000 to its female competitors.  …

The average salary for a player in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) in 2023 was around $50,000 to $60,000 per year, and almost $120,000 in the WNBA this year. Those figures will surely rise soon, but pickleball, a relatively new professional sport, is also growing and should see prize money tick up too.

So there. Explain to me how America can be such a sexist, misogynistic patriarchy ruled by male oppressors whose toxic masculinity will have the ladies walking around in Handmaid's Tale outfits in no time, when the female athletes in a brand new professional league out there snapping necks and cashing checks. Someone built it, and the people have come. They've passed over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But Pickleball has marked the time.

So just remember this the next time someone's complaining about income inequality in pro sports. Sure, Juan Soto is pulling in $735 million while Angel Reese is scraping by on $120K. But as long as our female Pickleball legends are making bank, no one has anything to complain about. The free market has spoken.