2022: HOLD MY TEA! đŸ”

General Chat
2020

Depending on the sport, I am not disagreeing with your point at all. I am just saying were things seem to be going, I am not really arguing for or against it :slight_smile:

If is, however, a fact, that an average male pro, again depending on the sport, is gaining much more money than a top female pro because the viewership, the attendance/tickets, the ads, the shoes deals are massively different. So, maybe a lot more female pros would, in fact, stand to gain from a unified league, instead of the current system.

Lots of taboos in sports, after all, are changing because they were once considered “obviously correct” and now everyone is seeing that they were wrong. E.g. in the NBA draft it was once considered “obvious” that people would stay a few years in college “to get experience” and then get drafted. Even the greatest player in the world, Michael Jordan, stayed THREE YEARS in college basketball playing for free and that was “normal”.

A few years ago, even the mediocre players are staying just one year in college and are shooting their shot at the draft or G-league or go to play in Europe, and staying in college and playing for no money at all is now considered insane!

Now, things have progressed even more. Players are skipping even the one year of playing for free in college. The draft is now more merit based and so they will prefer to play in the G-League or abroad because they know that they will be considered if they play well. That’s the new trend.

Times change.

Compare with tennis:

Well, you might be right, but, as I said, this is not what other people think.

You will notice that in football most of the “greatest players of all times” tend to be on the shorter end of the spectrum, because a lower center of gravity is very useful in dribbling.

Being short, actually helps!

Garrincha (1.69m) was not really that short for his era, but he had a rare knee configuration for a football player that made his performance even more amazing.
Pele was 1.73m
Maradona was 1.65m
Eusebio was 1.75m
Ferenc PuskĂĄs was 1.72m
George Best was 1.75m
Alfredo DiStefano was 1.78m
Johann Cruyff was 1.78m
Michel Platini was 1.79m
Roberto Baggio is 1.72m
Clarence Seedorf is 1.77m and his great teammate in the Netherlands, Edgar Davids was 1.69m
Paul Gascoigne is 1.77m
Jean-Pierre Papin was 1.76m
Lionel Messi is 1.70m
Kylian Mbappe is 1.78m
Juninho Pernambucano is 1.78m
Robinho is 1.72m
and so on


It is, in fact, rare to see taller players be considered among the greatest in football and that is due to modern training facilities and conditioning, which can help taller people catch up in agility.
Christiano Ronaldo is 1.87m
Zinedine Zidane is 1.85m
Zlatan Imbrahimovic is 1.95m
Ronaldinho is 1.82m
Patrick Kluivert is 1.91m
I could keep up the list of the shorter players for hours, in the taller side it is a bit more difficult to come up with names. Thiery Henry, Ruud Gulit, George Weah, Socrates (not the philosopher :stuck_out_tongue: ), Rivaldo, Marco Van Basten and that’s all the people I can think of.

Most people outside of Greece will probably not remember this fellow Krzysztof Warzycha - Wikipedia but he was, easily, one of the top-5 strikers ever to grace the Greek league and scored a lot of goals in European games as well. He wasn’t tall (yet he took a lot of headers with great positioning), he wasn’t very fast, he wasn’t very agile, he wasn’t very strong either. He still is the second scorer in the country ever, with 244 goals in 385 games behind Thomas Mavros (who was incidentally 1.72m) and I do not see why it is considered inconceivable for a woman to be on that level for football.

Some people just have that “something” (e.g. Fillipo Inzaghi - all he had was great positioning and finishing), so, it is not about being “manly” per se, which is why with modern training and conditioning, in the coming years, unified leagues could actually work and a lot of people would probably be in favour of them in many sports.

2021

@JethOrensin :point_up_2:t2:

Also

Garrincha had more than a “knee configuration”, he was handicapped basically. He found the unique style that made his talent work with his disability. It’s a story for the history books, considering when it happened, on top of everything. So, women with the talent could play men with the strength, it’s not unbelievable.

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2022

If that’s the case, then it means that female sports haven’t been sufficiently promoted in public media. Many people have watched Serena Williams play grand slam finals. Not many would watch her if she played in a unified gender tournament against player #500.

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2023

Yes, that’s perfectly believable, but this would concern a small minority of women. To overcome a physical disadvantage you really need superior talent, and by definition only a small number of people have superior talent.

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2024

There is a huge discussion whether it is just about promotion. The WNBA has been promoted vigorously, but it is still not catching on. There is a very interesting point being made that if women are really interested in equality in sports, they should start being equally interested in watching sports. And it makes sense, since that is where the revenue is coming from.

The difference in numbers is massive:

So, it is not just promotion, but it is a marketing battle that will take decades, since they have to nurture a whole culture of watching sports in a very big demographic.

Again, you are correct and I do not disagree with you, but you win some, you lose some, there is no perfect solution. If with unified leagues hundreds of women and trans people could make great wages, instead of just a few superstars making mega-bucks, it would make sense for the majority to opt for what is in their best interest, right?

Let’s not forget that in sports that are not really established in the fans rotation (like football, basketball in Europe, american football and baseball in the States) it is easy to lose viewers, once the superstars wane.

E.g. Serena Williams is known world-wide, but she has not been near the top-10 for the past five years

on the contrary a player named Ashleigh Barty from Australia was the best in the past 3 years, with margines of almost 2000 points compared to the second one and I will admit that I had not heard of her or her amazing accomplishments, because most media focus on the stars and their promotion and not the sport itself. :thinking:
Had you asked me, I’d still think Serena and Venus was in the top-10 even though she is definitely not. Serena and Venus and their popularity made a lot of contribution into making women’s tennis world famous. Ashleigh Barty, dominated for three years and then retired, without ever getting the hype of a super-star that brought new fans to the sport.

Again the numbers are a serious issue:

Once you lose your star that is “the face of the sport”, things might become worse for all the others.

2025

Men can also watch female sports. When I watch the Olympics, the World athletics championship or the Roland Garros tournament, I watch both male and female competitions. So the potential viewership is already there.

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2026

Of course we do, but you have to expand to the new market. In Olympics and track and field and gymnastics where the categories are separated but the events are combined, most people watch the whole thing, but in totally separate leagues and events, there are only 24 hours in the day and there is market saturation on how much sports the same target audience of people can watch.

You can’t expect even from the hooligans/ultras to all attend back to back venues, let alone normal everyday fans. (e.g. It’s Eurobasket season now, I highly doubt that there are many people that watch more than one game per day, even though there are four of them on TV.)

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2027

Greece has a huge “watch football” culture.

However

Most men I’ve encountered will watch the localest of the local matches played by men before they watch a women’s international game.

They’d rather watch the lamest players kicking here and there and shoving each other to justify their 90 minutes, than an actual exciting match with technique and imagination, highs and lows, and actual stakes.

They’ve told me countless times variations of “it’s a men’s sport” and “it’s different to watch women playing cute sports and/or wearing nice things when playing sports, football attire isn’t it”.

So, I’m not holding my breath that women’s football is going to get the big sponsors any time soon.

By the way, I originally disagree with sports getting the big sponsors anyway. I’d rather all that money go to somewhere more worthy, but if it has to go there, everyone who works in the field (pun intended) should benefit the same.

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2028

That is true, which is why I mentioned that slowly the question emerges “why don’t women go and watch women’s sports and how this be improved” and there needs to be a massive culture-altering marketing campaign for this to be achieved.

At the end of the day, at least in Greece, there are more women than men. Potentially the market would have been larger if women went to watch sports, in the same percentages as men. I do not see why “watching sports” has to be a gender based habit.

If you fill up the stadiums with fans that are willing to buy merch, the money will come running. I agree that it will probably not happen anytime soon, but the potential is always there.

Me too. I enjoy amateur sports more, but things are as they are.

They are, at that. It is all about the market. The WNBA is losing money each year and that is a complicated issue. Candace Parker might be the face of the league and the equivalent of the LeBron James of that league, but the product itself is not profitable, so where would the money come from to pay her as much?

It is not that there is a wage gap. The whole product is not making as much money. Again the numbers are clear:

as for the 50-50 and 80-20, I am sorry, but I think that it is disingenious to ignore that running a team orginisation has some standard costs which you have to cover or cease to exist (e.g. stadium, leases, travel expenses, etc). With that huge revenue the NBA can cover that cost, make profit and then be lavish with the players. A business that is not even making profit, can’t do that.

The Golden State Warriors have 200 million dollars of operating income. More than 3 times of WNBA’s whole revenue.

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2029

I know I’ll fall in the anecdotal trap, but in case I haven’t mentioned this before (it still makes my blood boil after 20+ years):

When I was in high school, entry system to university changed. It was always the rule that you need private lessons to pass the exams, but especially that year you couldn’t go anywhere without the extra lessons (this is a tl;dr obviously, let’s just say grades were a massacre).

So, our last year almost everyone got extra private lessons, if parents had remaining kidneys to afford it.

There was a classmate of mine, a smart and capable person, but not a genius enough to make it without the extra lessons. Her father chose to pay his annual football club ticket pass instead of paying for private lessons to help send his kid to university. I still remember her crying in our classroom because of this.

I’ve hated people who prioritize their Fandom ever since.

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2030

I would also hate a system in which you need private lessons to enter university.

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2031

I hate that you have to pay money under the table to get decent public health care, but my parents hated it and didn’t let me die at the same time, so :woman_shrugging:t2:

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2032

Yes of course, a responsible parent would favor their children’s future over leisure activities. What I had in mind is that maybe some other parents couldn’t afford to pay for private lessons anyway, regardless of whether they watch football or not.

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2033

Yes, of course, I would never fault a parent for not being able to support that system, despite their best efforts. System sucks in so many ways.

That specific person though deserves a special place in hell.

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2034

Female football unfortunately is very boring. Just doesn’t have the same speed and strength of kicks. I tried getting into it, you know, Nadeshiko Japan and all that. But it’s impossible, it’s hard to justify wasting 90+ minutes of your life as it is and when the quality of games is like that, what is even the point.

On the money side I’m curious if all those Meijin sponsorships make a profit. I’m finding it hard to believe that anyone is getting back all the money that are put in.

2035

I have this feeling about watching football regardles if men or women are playing (basically about watching any sport, actually).

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2036

I have felt that way about professional golf my whole life. I just don’t understand where the money is coming from. Football, baseball, basketball—even tennis—I understand. But golf?

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2037

Like when watching others play Go?

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2038

Are you talking about the last year of the old system (which was indeed insane in terms of difficulty) or the first year of the next one?

If I remember correctly it was a reverse massacre when the system changed in 2000-2001, because they switched to many lessons and put very easy topics, so everyone’s grades were inflated, but that meant that even one tiny mistake in any of the 15+ lessons that were in the examination could cost you the admission. :face_with_head_bandage:

Being a private tutor was one of my jobs until last year when I stopped it due to covid. It is not that it is needed per se, but it is viewed as something that you get to do when you have higher goals in universities.

The system itself is designed to be an open competition where everyone in the country is being examined at the same topics at the same time. Their grades are then pooled and depending on what universities they declared, they are distributed to each department. This ensures fairness of everyone not knowing the topics beforehand and fairness in the process of grading where people cannot really cheat. (always a big issue here in most other walks of life)

However this means that there is no fairness in preparation. There is no real way to enforce any fairness in that regard and thus private tutors, private schools and extra resources will always be available to those that can afford them.
For example, any random school in the capital is always expected to have better teachers and better equipment than the highschool in my village, thus people always felt that they had to level the field with extra tutoring, especially when the particular school teacher that was assigned to your school was inane. I actually switched my whole major due to inept teachers at school and opted for the harder category (adv. math, adv. physics, adv.biology, adv. chemistry) because at least there the school teachers where competent and I wouldn’t have to pay for much tutoring (couldn’t really afford it)

Same thing with the sports, with every system you win some, you lose some.
A lot of my clients in a particular village had no school teacher at all for some lessons, during the first 2-3 months of school. At that point you either give up, self-study or hire a tutor. What else can you do?

I always had the same question, but is the past-time of very rich people, so my guess is that they subsidise it. The USA seems to view golf in the same way it views military power and aims to have as many golf courses as the next 20 countries combined :stuck_out_tongue:

I find it highly unlikely that those are really viable businesses without high profile patrons propping them up.

2039

That was my tentative conclusion, too, but it has never fully satisfied me.

About the golf courses. In the U.S., they are a form of really grotesque corruption. They are usually subsidized in the form of huge tax breaks by local jurisdictions, and consequently they are an attractive investment for super-rich who want to park their money somewhere. The rationale for this is that they preserve some open space, with trees and grass, etc.

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