Sportico’s 2024 list of the world’s 100 highest-paid athletes made headlines for many reasons, but none as striking as the absence of female athletes for the second straight year. The sports business publication released the report on February 12, featuring athletes from eight sports and 27 countries, yet not a single female athlete made the cut despite their commercial success in the adjudged year.

United States tennis prodigy Coco Gauff was the highest-paid female athlete in 2024 with an estimated income of $30.4 million — about $7 million short of Minnesota Vikings’ Daniel Jones, who closed out the list with $37.5 million in earnings. Sportico’s further breakdown of the data revealed that Gauff would have only managed a No. 125 ranking on an extended list. At the same time, the second-highest-paid female athlete of the year, Freeskier Eileen Gu, with $22.1 million in earnings, wouldn’t even crack the top 250.

The pay disparity in sports couldn’t be more pronounced than this. It becomes even clearer when viewed through historical trends.  In Sportico’s four-year history of athlete earnings reports, only two women — Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams — have ever broken into the top 100. Forbes’s list, which has been tracking athlete pay since 2010, has never featured more than three women at once, and these anomalies are all tennis stars: Maria Sharapova, Li Na, Serena and Osaka, the only active player in the circle. Even if Osaka and Gauff break through in future years, their inclusion wouldn’t come close to fixing the stark earning disparity between men and women in sports.

“It’s unfair,’’ said Juventus Women forward Alisha Lehmann, who joined the Italian giants from Aston Villa alongside her boyfriend Douglas Luiz in 2024. “We do the same job, but he earns a hundred thousand times more than me,’’ the Swiss international added.

Lehmann’s frustration is well justified, but the bigger picture tells a more complicated story. Though women’s sports have commanded growing viewership and followings in recent years, men’s sports still enjoy far greater audiences. Larger audiences translate to bigger broadcast deals and more lucrative sponsorship opportunities, leading to higher revenues for male teams, leagues, and, ultimately, athletes. Salaries and prize money account for 72 percent of earnings for the top 15 highest-earning men, while it’s just 29 percent for the women. To put it in figures, the top 15 highest-paid female athletes in 2024 earned $64 million in salaries, while endorsements accounted for $157 million, the lion’s share of their income. Male athletes, on the other hand, earned a whopping $1.36 billion from salaries alone.

This disparity exists due to over a century-long investment in men’s sports. The earliest forms and variants of sports, as we came to know them, were an all-male affair. Some of the most popular sports today — football, basketball, tennis, wrestling — reflect this history. Football’s modern form was formalised in 1863, but women’s official recognition only came with the FIFA Women’s World Cup over a century later in 1991. Tennis began in 1873, with women’s events following in 1884, though equal visibility took much longer. Wrestling, one of the world’s oldest sports dating back to 3000 BCE, only introduced women’s freestyle events at the Olympics in 2004 — a staggering 5000 years later. Even athletics, which traces its origins to the ancient Greek Olympics in 776 BCE, only saw women’s participation in 1928.

This long history of delayed integration explains much of the gap we see today in opportunities and earnings. When women were eventually integrated, the social and cultural perception of sports was staunchly on the male side. Over the years, there has been some progress remedying this, but these steps have largely been like a drop in the ocean, as greater value continues to be placed on male sports and competitions. 

For instance, at the last edition of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in 2024, the winner’s prize money was pegged at $7 million, the runner-up received $4 million, and the losing semi-finalists got $2.5 million each. By contrast, the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) in 2022 offered $5 million to the winners, $3 million to the runner-up, and just $225,000 to the losing semifinalists.

This gap is even wider in the court of national bodies like the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), which has historically shown little willingness to challenge the trend. According to multiple sources, each player invited for the Super Eagles game is due a $5,000 bonus for a win and a daily camp allowance of $200. According to multiple sources, each player invited for the Super Eagles game is due a $5,000 bonus for a win and a daily camp allowance of $200. The Super Falcons, however, receive just a $100 daily camp allowance and a $3,000 win bonus. While these figures can be influenced by factors like competition level and the operational funding from FIFA or CAF, the disparity remains glaring and is a persistent issue that female players have long contended with.

Back in 2019, Super Falcons captain Desire Oparanozie voiced her frustration over this inequality at the Ladies in Sports (LIS) Conference in Lagos. “We are the most successful female team in Africa, yet we have the largest disparities between men’s and women’s pay,” she said. “I think we deserve equal pay. This big gap tells a different story, and a proper rethink of this mode of payment could also help the women’s game.“

Years after Oparanozie’s remarks, the issue remains very much alive — and it’s even worse at the local level. In the 2023/24 league season in Nigeria, the champions of the Nigeria Women’s Football League, Edo Queens, received a N10 million prize for their triumph, according to Soccernet. In the same season, the male champions, Enugu Rangers, took home N150 million for winning the league. 

If this is the financial state of Nigeria’s most followed and celebrated sport, one can only imagine how deep the disparity runs across other sports. 

The issue of media coverage also plays a crucial role in this disparity. A 30-year study by Purdue University’s Cheryl Cooky revealed that, as of 2019, coverage of women’s sports on television news and highlight shows, including ESPN’s SportsCenter, accounted for only 5.4 percent of total sports coverage — a figure that has remained largely unchanged since the 1980s. There have been recent improvements, with women’s sports comprising an average of 15 percent of total sports media coverage in 2022, but the quality and depth of this coverage still lag behind.

Some studies have found that media coverage of female athletes tends to focus more on their appearance or personal lives rather than their athletic skills and achievements, an approach that undermines their legitimacy as serious sports professionals. Moreover, the timing and prominence of this coverage also reflect a systemic bias. Women’s sports are often relegated to off-peak hours or less prominent channels, while men’s events are frequently scheduled during prime-time slots, maximizing viewership and advertising revenue.

“Every now and then, women’s sports break through the glass ceiling of media coverage, but only when it’s an elite, international competition. Even these mega-events are eclipsed by the steady stream of men’s sports, which are covered in season, out of season, with more energy and at higher production values,’’ Cooky stated.

There have been some significant initiatives and moves to ensure equitable compensation and treatment for female athletes. Female tennis players occasionally break into the top 100 lists thanks to former world No. 1 tennis player  Billie Jean King’s advocacy and the creation of the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973. This led all four major tennis tournaments (US Open, Australian Open, French Open, and Wimbledon) to adopt equal prize money. In football, Norway took the first step in 2017 by offering its female and male football players equal pay, and we’ve since seen countries like Brazil, Wales, Australia, and recently the USA follow suit. Equal pay has also been adopted in a handful of other less-followed sports like squash, badminton, and archery.

These are efforts in the right direction, but for female athletes to consistently break into the highest-earning ranks, there must be a deep, systemic commitment to leveling the playing field across boards. Until then, the gap will persist, and the occasional breakthrough of stars like Osaka will be few and far between.