runningDoc
Double Eagle Member
- Joined
- May 21, 2014
- Messages
- 1,606
it happened with women's tennis. I think the U.S. Open was the first major to do it in the early 90's, but they decided that men's and women's champions deserved the same prize money.
you can make the same argument that men's tennis is harder (they play 5 sets), more athletic, higher/more competition... but by that time actual prize money was so dwarfed by sponsorship money you could see the trend that it didn't matter what the gender was... women's tennis was a potential money making bonanza (attire, shoes, racquets, other sponsorships) way back in the early 90's.
Back during that era...There was a great batch of women tennis superstars: Graf, Seles, Capriati, Sabintini, Navratalova, Sanchez etc *that were the same women at the finals of 99% of the tournaments (kind of like women's disc golf today). I think it was a genius move for top tournaments to give them the same prize money as the men...because in the end at that level prize money was moot - even if substantial amounts comparing to what the companies/federations were making on the bottom line.
and now today you have players like Serena, and before the scandal (Sharapova) just raking in the cash though sponsoship deals.. even more than the men sometimes.
so if you have companies like innova doing well and focusing their lucrative contracts to only the very best like McBeth... maybe it would be a smart move to give their top female player like Val (who also is a multiple champion) a comparable contract.... not just for optics, but to get ahead of the possible trend of more females getting into disc golf (what seems like a great untapped market).
It may sound absurd to some but lets say Paul McBeth gets that $500,000k three year contract from innova, why not show a little love to the other 4x women's champ and give her a $200k three year contract? Give her a something guaranteed to be profitable like the Aviar P&A (to where dudes can't avoid buying because they don't want a girl disc). You might start a huge trend of really getting women disc golfers to jump into the sport.
*the weird thing? I'm not even into tennis. But they did such a good job of advertising and promoting their stars that I still remember those 90's women superstars! Just like I know about those early 90's mens tennis superstars like sampras, lendel, becker, agassi, edberg.. etc...
you can make the same argument that men's tennis is harder (they play 5 sets), more athletic, higher/more competition... but by that time actual prize money was so dwarfed by sponsorship money you could see the trend that it didn't matter what the gender was... women's tennis was a potential money making bonanza (attire, shoes, racquets, other sponsorships) way back in the early 90's.
Back during that era...There was a great batch of women tennis superstars: Graf, Seles, Capriati, Sabintini, Navratalova, Sanchez etc *that were the same women at the finals of 99% of the tournaments (kind of like women's disc golf today). I think it was a genius move for top tournaments to give them the same prize money as the men...because in the end at that level prize money was moot - even if substantial amounts comparing to what the companies/federations were making on the bottom line.
and now today you have players like Serena, and before the scandal (Sharapova) just raking in the cash though sponsoship deals.. even more than the men sometimes.
so if you have companies like innova doing well and focusing their lucrative contracts to only the very best like McBeth... maybe it would be a smart move to give their top female player like Val (who also is a multiple champion) a comparable contract.... not just for optics, but to get ahead of the possible trend of more females getting into disc golf (what seems like a great untapped market).
It may sound absurd to some but lets say Paul McBeth gets that $500,000k three year contract from innova, why not show a little love to the other 4x women's champ and give her a $200k three year contract? Give her a something guaranteed to be profitable like the Aviar P&A (to where dudes can't avoid buying because they don't want a girl disc). You might start a huge trend of really getting women disc golfers to jump into the sport.
*the weird thing? I'm not even into tennis. But they did such a good job of advertising and promoting their stars that I still remember those 90's women superstars! Just like I know about those early 90's mens tennis superstars like sampras, lendel, becker, agassi, edberg.. etc...
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