Unpopular Opinion #4 - Comparing men’s and women’s sport isn’t smart and we need to stop it!

Introduction

I absolutely love sport.

I like some sports more or less than others. Some I like to participate in but don’t watch, some are the other way round. For some it’s both, some it’s neither and for some I just wish my body could still do it!

It’s also a topic of conversation that I love too. But what I really, really don’t love is comparing men’s and women’s sport. I just don’t think it’s an intelligent conversation to have. And I don’t think people discuss it well. By which I mean I don’t think that there is a good understanding of the issues. So it can easily descend into sexist discussions which show a lack of understanding of both sports issues and gender issues.

A couple of facts worth understanding.

There are individuals who don’t care about sports, and that must make the world an annoying place for them at times. Because collectively we definitely do. According to Sports Business Journal, 94 of the 100 most watched telecasts in the USA in 2022 were sports. 19 of the top 20 were sports, only interrupted by the State of the Union address. In 2020 it was ‘much lower’ with only 75% of the most watched telecasts being sports, due to election coverage. And if you want to really feel how much we care about sports then just go stand on the sidelines of any children’s sports, anywhere in the world, at any level, and observe the parents! Humans care about sports.

Trying to establish which is the most watched sport is like trying to get supporters of 20 different teams to agree on which is the best. Or trying to get consensus on who is the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) in any one sport.

The Summer Olympics, Winter Olympics and FIFA (Men’s) World Cup are unsurprisingly the most watched. They also only happen once every 4 years. Annually the world likes the Tour de France and Super Bowl best but there are others too. The most popular horse races, for example, get huge viewerships, as do world cups of cricket and rugby, open tennis tournaments and so on.

There are others that make their case for popularity but part of the problem is that viewing figures are estimated and the estimating process is not consistent and identical across sports and countries etc. However, for the biggest sporting events the viewership is in the billions. So we should easily be able to agree that sports are popular.

Men’s sports - the most watched single discipline sports are all men’s sports. There are huge amounts of money in those sports and they’ve been around, for men at least, for a very long time. The most popular men’s sports don’t need any help from me.

I don’t like generalising, but when you are comparing the genders you somewhat have to because they are very large groups. I think I can say, without too much criticism, that men are traditionally more interested in sports as a whole group than women are, as a whole group. So it should be little wonder that sports have developed the way they have. I’m happy to accept that to move the discussion onward if you are? It’s useful to understand how we got here, but we don’t have to keep accepting it the way it always has been.

So I want to advocate for women’s sports. And to do that I’m going to do something that I said in the title of this article isn’t smart - I’m going to compare men’s sports to women’s sports and make a case for taking more interest in women’s sports. Even worse, I’ll compare some on a sport by sport basis. And, from a sporting quality perspective, (spoiler alert) I’m going to argue in favour of women’s sport. If you’ve got a fragile male ego and want to keep sports for the boys, this probably isn’t for you!

Football (soccer)

In my adopted home of Australia its soccer, and in my homeland of the UK its football. Believe me you don’t want to call it the wrong one or you’ll be misunderstood at best, and bullied by your mates at worst. Whatever you call it and wherever you are, it’s a big sport and is still rapidly growing both in participation and viewership. Calling it the world game is more than just marketing.

I love the FIFA World Cup and I don’t believe I’ve ever missed watching an England World Cup game since early childhood. I’ve dipped in and out of the women’s World Cup over the years but this year I’ve been hooked. Why? Because the standard has been excellent. And if you love the sport you couldn’t help but enjoy it. Fast, skilful, competitive and exciting, it’s everything you want from a world sporting event. Some of the better goals hold up well when compared to the better goals in the men’s World Cup. Critics will point to the few games that were a bit one sided. Not smart. There have been one sided games in the men’s version too. The men’s game has been fully professional, with immense amounts of resources poured into it, for decades. The women’s game isn’t at that stage in its evolution yet - imagine how good it’s going to be at the same maturity level as the men’s game!

The current holders (USA) who have won 4 of the 8 world cups so far have been knocked out at the group stage yesterday. We are only just entering the knock out stages and we’ve already had big upsets, fantastic goals, comebacks and great competitive skill. For excitement, I think it’s fantastic. So don’t compare it to the men’s game, just watch it for what it is. You won’t be disappointed! Unless you’re English and living in Australia and cheering for both teams - both teams getting to the final will be very conflicting!

Rugby League

Northern England is both the birthplace and heartland of rugby league. Although football/soccer is the vastly dominant sport in the UK, I feel fortunate to be born in Northern England and to have the love of rugby league that came with that. Now living in Australia works well for me since the best rugby league in the world is played here. And some of the best rugby league in the world is played by the women. That’s right, there are plenty of occasions where the women’s games on the weekend are better than the men’s game. And I know this because I watch several games of both men’s and women’s rugby league each week on TV.

How is the women’s game sometimes better than the men’s? Well, there are a few reasons.

Speed - for the average rugby league fan the men’s game has got too fast in my view. The men’s sport is so evolved that the better teams just play so quickly at times. To the point where I can be with friends watching a game and the words ‘what happened there’ are uttered more than any other. Some games are just too fast for all but the most dedicated to follow sometimes. The women’s game is a bit slower for several reasons. Elite male athletes in any sport are faster than elite female athletes in the same sport, the men’s game is more evolved having been fully professional for many years where as the women’s game still isn’t fully professional and so there just hasn’t been time to develop the same level of elite level playing. This is not a bad thing. In my very well considered opinion, some sports can be ‘too fast’.

Competitiveness - the women’s game is pretty close. It’s an unfair comparison because the women’s season is shorter and has fewer teams but the women’s teams are closer to each other in terms of skill so they are highly competitive. And for me, that is a big part of what sport is all about. Men who argue against women’s rugby league will say men’s is more competitive. Not true and not smart. There are more blowout winning margins in the fully evolved, fully professional and mature men’s game. In the first weekend of July this year one team beat another 74-0 and the very next day another result was 66-0. And that’s at the elite level! It’s obviously not like that every weekend. But the women’s game is closer in terms of competitiveness. No doubt.

Aggression - if you don’t know the sport then one thing you should know about rugby league is that we like big physical contact and aggression (as well as skill, obviously) in our sport. In my view it’s the most gladiatorial team sport in the world. The small reduction in pace gives female players marginally more time to line up the player running the ball and perfectly time their tackle resulting in huge physical collisions. And if you think the bigger male players make bigger tackles than the women then think again.

I was fortunate and grateful to join my client CCSG Legal Pty Ltd at the women’s State of Origin game in Sydney recently. For many (me included), State of Origin is the pinnacle of any rugby league competition, including internationals. And this year, I’d say the women’s series was better than the men’s. The game was competitive, the crowd were engaged and there in numbers, including a lot of female supporters. YTG!

In conclusion, the women’s game of rugby league is every bit as good as the men’s. On any given weekend there are women’s rugby league games that are better (by any measure) than some of the men’s games. I know a few people very involved and very knowledgeable when it comes to the sport of rugby league and all of them agree that the women’s game is already excellent and developing so fast.

So that’s my two most watched sports covered. But there are others that are great for comparison.

Tennis

Tennis is a good one to compare, and one in which people get really worked up! The four grand slams (USA, Australia, France, UK aka Wimbledon) are the pinnacle of professional tennis. They now pay the same prize money to the men’s and women’s singles winners, even though the men play best of 5 and women play best of 3. I agree with this. Well done tennis. Lots don’t agree through and use an ‘equal pay for equal work’ argument, which isn’t how it’s usually used. Which is interesting in and of itself, especially to someone in my profession.

I care a lot about the equal pay argument in my professional life generally, but here I’m going to say I agree with women tennis players being paid the same as men for winning the grand slams. Why? Well, if for no other reason, I prefer women’s tennis and personally I’d actually pay more to watch it. That’s right, I think women’s tennis is better than men’s tennis.

Even if you don’t love tennis you know how it works. Someone serves and then the ball gets hit back and forth until someone wins the point. I think hitting the ball back and forth is the most interesting part of the sport and women do it more. The ‘rallys’ are longer and I find that more enjoyable to watch. Playing the sport at a slightly slower speed is better for tennis in my opinion, and that makes women’s tennis better by default (also in my opinion).

To be clear I enjoy men’s and women’s tennis for their different characteristics. But if I can only watch one Wimbledon final it would be the women’s. I think playing best of 3 is better than best of 5 - when a men’s game goes to 5 sets I really think it can take too long. And some of the professional male players agree. The power and speed of the men’s game means that there are more service aces in the men’s game and when you get a lot of them it leads to a pretty boring game of tennis I think.

I’m gonna do the GOAT thing on this one. The GOAT of tennis is a continuously and hotly debated topic and usually between the ‘big 3’. Roger Federer with 20 grand slams, Rafael Nadal with 22 and Novak Djokovic with 23 are generally considered the three people to put into the debate. But when it comes to the GOAT debate the only question is who is the winner between Steffi Graf with 22 titles (before any of the big 3 had won any) and Serena Williams who has won 23 (before Novak was even close). Graf is also the only player to win the true golden slam - all four opens and an Olympic gold in the same year. So it’s either Graf then Williams, or the other way round. The ‘big 3’ are in the mix for third, fourth and fifth place. Controversial, maybe, but I’m standing by it.

Gymnastics

Gymnastics is an interesting sport to put in to the comparison, because men’s and women’s gymnastics is deliberately different in a way that showcases the athletic talents of men and women in their own way. And right up front I’m happy to share that I think that gymnasts are probably the peak of human athleticism. I don’t know of another sport that tests strength, skill and control of the entire human body in such a wide ranging way the way that gymnastics does.

I especially like that we don’t seem to compare the men’s and women’s disciplines of the sport. We accept them for the differences that they have and celebrate both (somewhat) equally. Some prefer the men’s disciplines and some prefer the women’s. But they’re all impressive and most people seem to be able to agree on that without comparing them to each other. Go figure.

Horse racing

Rarely do we get to compare men and women directly alongside one another in sport. But sometimes we do that in horse racing. And in 2015 when Michelle Payne won the Melbourne Cup (described as the ‘horse race that stops a nation’ in Australia - it doesn’t btw) we got to do just that.

In horse racing women compete alongside men, although there are much more male jockeys than female, so on that basis alone female jockeys would win fewer races. I’m not an expert on horse racing but jockeys are certainly athletes. When you do any like for like athletic comparison between men and women, in pretty much all cases, men come out in front merely due to nature. So when a woman wins a peak athletic event on a like for like basis against men then the world should really pay attention, if only for how impressive that sporting achievement is (there are other reasons to be impressed too, but they’re not the subject of this article).

As she came off the course in Victoria, Michelle told waiting media: “I want to say to everyone else, get stuffed, because women can do anything and we can beat the world.” Right on Michelle! The story of her life was immortalised in the movie Ride Like a Girl and is a great watch.

Netball

I’m a fairly recent convert to netball. With all the other sports I’m interested in I just didn’t think I needed another one. And not an almost exclusively female one. But I was wrong. Netball is fantastic.

So, first of all, it’s a super short debate to have to reach the conclusion that women’s netball is vastly better than men’s netball! But, as you know, I don’t believe comparing men’s sports to women’s sports is smart anyway!

I was first introduced to netball a couple of years ago when I was seated at a charity dinner with Briony Akle and Maddy Proud , respectively the coach and captain of the NSW Swifts netball team. Incidentally it was the Dymocks Children's Charities gala dinner - give them an follow! Unfortunately for me I didn’t know anything about netball so I wasn’t off to a flying start. I also failed to recognise a TV presenter on the same table and had thought they were someone else’s +1, which came out when we were in conversation, so I was really on my game that night! Briony and Maddy were great people to sit and talk with at dinner and so I was committed to tuning in to watch netball at the start of the season. Which worked out great because the first game I watched was an absolute thriller, which was won by the Swifts. (You’re welcome for the good luck charm btw!). I’ve watched numerous games since, always cheer for the Swifts, and am never disappointed with the quality of the sporting competition.

We’ve also just had the netball World Cup and you couldn’t want for a more exciting world sporting event. England beat the Aussies in the earlier rounds by one point only for the Aussies to get their revenge in the final over the otherwise undefeated England team. The final had the scores level at the end of the first quarter, close by half time and then it was pretty comprehensive for the Diamonds (great team name Australia!) in the second half. There had also been two very close and competitive semi finals with local rivals New Zealand and Australia putting on a great show, and unbeaten England edging out also unbeaten Jamaica in the other thrilling semi.

A great female sporting event that is made so much better by there being no unhealthy comparisons to men’s sport.

Summer and Winter Olympics (last one!)

There are so many sports where we just don’t compare men and women. Both flavours of Olympics are a great example. Most of us don’t religiously follow most of the sports that are contested so what do we do? We cheer for competitors representing our own country and enjoy the competitiveness of it. Throwing a javelin, shot put or discus? We just care who gets it the furthest and don’t worry about how far the other gender did when it was their turn. Swimming, hurdles, downhill skiing. We just want you to get to the finish line fastest. Whoever heard a commentator at the end of the 1,500 metres praise the female winner but then declare how much faster the men’s winner was the day before? Pretty much never.

Final thought

It would be easy to go on comparing but who’s got all day to read it? Suffice to say, if you’re having conversations about the quality of women’s sport, and comparing it to men’s sport just stop. Enjoy it for what it is, encourage others to do so, participate yourself, go watch the events, check it out on TV and get behind your team. And that goes for men and women. If we want to see improvements in women’s sports, which have undeniably historically been left behind men’s sports, then we’re all in it together folks!

I use Bard and Safari as my AI and browser of choice (although neither exclusively) when researching. But all the words and opinions are my own. No disclaimer - I stand behind what I write and happy to do so.