The Battle of the Sexes: Professional Athlete Salaries Compared in Australia

Australian female athletes’ salaries have long been reported to be less than their male counterparts, even when they are playing the same sport. According to a 2019 report by the Australian Sports Commission, men earned an average of $27,000 per year more than women for professional sports in Australia. The gap is even wider when comparing team sports such as AFL, NRL and soccer, where an average depending on the sport and the league, men sometimes out earn the women’s league players by more than 10 times. In addition to the salary discrepancies between genders in professional sport, female athletes are often denied the same access to career opportunities that men enjoy. This includes a lack of pathways from semi-professional sports into professional leagues and reduced sponsorship and media coverage for female sports. 

National Cricket Leagues of Australia
A report released by the Australian Sports Commission revealed that the pay gap between men and women players in the national cricket leagues was still significant. Male players earned 3 to 5 times more than their female counterparts, depending on the league. A cricketer in the men’s league can earn millions, whereas their female counterparts only made a fraction of that amount, even at the highest level of the pay bracket.

Source: GQ, Danielle Warby, SportsPro Media, Fox Sports, Australia Unwrapped

According to SportsPro Media, in the 2021 season, female Australian cricketers received a long-awaited payrise, with the average base salary for contracted players in both Twenty20 and 50-over leagues rising by over $10K to reach more than $65K. This 22% increase from last year’s contracters is far behind what men receive – an impressive retainer of nearly 200 grand ($200K)!

The situation has been highlighted by the much-publicised pay dispute between Cricket Australia and its female players. In 2017, the players’ union proposed a revenue-sharing model for the game that saw the men’s team receiving a greater share of the money earned from broadcasting rights than women’s teams.

Source: GQ, Danielle Warby, SportsPro Media, Fox Sports

Although the Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Government have taken steps to close the gender pay gap in professional sports; the pay gap between male and female athletes in Australia continues to be a source of frustration for many, as some believe that it reinforces a culture that compensates ​​men more than women. 

When it comes to athletics, the gender gap is undeniable. A perfect display of this lies in Forbes’ list of World’s Highest-Paid Athletes – an all-male lineup with no female representation at all. Unfortunately, even data on Australian cricket players show a disparity between men’s and women’s salaries; records available online only reveal earnings for male athletes while much less information can be found regarding their female counterparts.

Professional sports in Australia: Average salaries of male and female athletes
Comparisons between team sports; AFL, NRL, cricket and soccer.

In Australia, the gender pay gap continues to be an issue for professional athletes. Despite the success of women’s sport in recent years, male and female athletes often receive vastly different salaries. 

A key example is Australian Rules Football (AFL).

Although in 2022, as part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), the AFLW received an average 94% pay increase, their male counterparts in the AFL still out earn them by an over 10x! If you’re doing the math, the average salary for men at AFL clubs is $406,000 compared to just a little over $39,000 for women. This is a difference of over $367,000 between genders. 

The gender pay gap is even more pronounced in soccer. In the A-League, the average full-time salary for men was almost four times higher than that of women – with men earning an average salary of $377,300 compared to just $96,400 for women.

Source: GQ, Danielle Warby, NRL

National Rugby League (NRL) also exhibits this pay gap – the average salary for men in 2022 was $371,000 compared to just $37,500 for NRLW, the women’s league. This equates to a difference of $333,500 in salaries between genders. According to the NRL, this will increase to $63,250 by 2027.

The minimum wage of a player in the NRLW is $30,000 in 2023, compare that with $55,000 for the NRL. This means that the minimum wage of players in the same sport and in comparable leagues (just one happens to be female athletes), is a difference of $25,000.

Top 10 Australian National Rugby League (NRL) and National Rugby League Women (NRLW) Player Salaries for 2023

Source: GQ, Danielle Warby, NRL

In addition to the pay gap between genders, female players also received much less media coverage than their male counterparts. This was highlighted by a 2019 report which showed that, only 18% of all sports-related news stories featured women’s teams or players.

On average, male professional athletes in Australia earn significantly more than female professional athletes. The median annual salary for male athletes is approximately $1.3 million, while the median annual salary for female athletes is just $200,000. However, this gap is slowly closing as more female athletes follow in the footsteps of high-profile professionals such as Barty and Gilmore.