Gender equality in televising tennis - this is a stupid debate

Why do you think that the men's matches are generally scheduled for times of day that are more conducive to at-home audiences? Is it sexism or is it because of the fact that the at-home audience would prefer to watch the generally far more exciting men's matches?

I know which one I think is the case.

A bunch of people including Andy Murray are calling for an "even split" between men and women matches for the night matches that are watched by most people around the world. Of course the matches being in the evenings means that more people are going to be able to attend the matches as well.

This is so reminiscent of the whining that the US Women's national soccer team was doing about equal pay between them and the men's team after they won the world cup. The information about the fact that men's soccer / football generates HUGE amounts of money and viewers while the women's matches don't even come close just fell on deaf ears.

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I don't know if Andy is just trying to involve himself in this discussion to bring attention to himself or if he really believes that splitting the evening matches 50/50 is a good idea. If it is the second thing he has a fundamental lack of understanding about how all sports work. The prize money, the competition, and even the fact that the sport is televised at all has everything to do with revenue and if you don't televise the matches that people actually want to watch, the sport loses money and he will as well.

I suppose it is really easy for Murray and his estimated net worth of $100 million to be completely out of touch but a big part of the reason why he has that money is because of his matches being in high profile spots and therefore people wanted to, and were able to watch them.

Let's look at a recent event that I happened to see in the women's QUARTERFINALS that was a complete flop and boring to watch.

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The match was between Veronika Kudermetova and Daria Kasatkina and in case you are wondering yes, I copy-pasted those names. This match was done and dusted in 2 hours and it was filled with sloppy rallies and play that I personally don't feel is very representative of the last remaining 8 people in any tournament let alone one of the most prestigious tennis tournaments of the year.

This was for the most part not entertaining, was filled with errors, and there was practically no one in attendance because I guess the people who had tickets simply didn't care enough to come and watch. I suppose someone could try to make the argument that if this game had been on in the evening more people would care but is that a fair assumption? Who would benefit by this being in a more prime-time position for TV? I suppose it would benefit these two but it would be at the expense of moving one of the day's matches out of prime time that had a packed house and all sorts of people around the world tuned in to see. That is, the men's matches that took place on the same day.

If we are going to talk about equality Andy, how about we talk about the fact that the prize money for the women is exactly the same as the men's yet the women play far fewer sets. The women have best of 3 sets and the men are forced to play best of 5. If we are truly reaching for equality, why does no one address this very glaringly obvious difference in "equality?"

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_{Nobody's complaining about getting the same prize money for playing nearly half as much tennis!}

This is the big problem that I have with the tennis equality discussion and even mass media recognizes that until the 3 set vs 5 set issue is resolved, any talk of "equality" will not make any sense. You can read one such article here if you want to.

I've said it many times before about many different sports: The events you watch on TV are not about the sport in question. It is, just like everything else in life, about money. The people who run the tournaments are not doing so out a sense of altruism, they are doing it because it generates huge amounts of money for them. The fact of the matter is that generally speaking, the men's matches are a lot more entertaining to watch and therefore more people are interested in watching. I will be really upset if we start prioritizing social-justice over the actual demand of the audience.

I'm also tired of millionaires whining about not getting "equal pay" when they already make many times the amount of money as almost everyone on the planet.