Most pro women athletes aren't making a living from sport

Women's sports are having a moment. Viewership is up, leagues are expanding, and media rights deals keep setting records. But there's a gap between how the category is doing and how the athletes inside it are doing — and a recent study puts hard numbers to it.

In December 2024, the sports marketing platform Parity published Beyond the Game, a survey of 500 women who competed professionally in 2023 across 55 different sports. The findings line up with something we think about constantly at Sportzap: the value athletes create and the money they actually keep are two very different things.

The short version — most pro women athletes aren't making a living from their sport. Here's what the numbers say.

The earnings gap is wider than most fans assume

Parity found that 58% of the athletes surveyed earned $25,000 or less from their sport in 2023, and 78% earned $50,000 or less. For context, the study notes the U.S. median individual income that year was just over $48,000.

The picture gets sharper when you add up costs. Travel, coaching, and equipment add real expenses, and once those are subtracted, Parity reported that roughly half of respondents — 50.4% — did not earn a net income from their sport at all.

Source: Parity, Beyond the Game (December 2024), survey of 500 professional women athletes.

Sponsorship money is rare and uneven

Direct competition pay isn't the only shortfall. According to the study, about 80% of respondents made less than $5,000 from endorsements or sponsorships, and more than half made nothing from endorsements. Only 9% earned more than $20,000 that way.

That's striking given how much athletes value this income when it does arrive. Parity found that an annual sponsorship of $20,000 would be "very meaningful" or "life-changing" to 88% of respondents — and even $5,000 would clear that bar for 42% of them. Small partnerships aren't small to the athlete on the other end.

Source: Parity, Beyond the Game (December 2024).

The second job is the norm, not the exception

Because the sport doesn't pay enough, most athletes work elsewhere. The study found the following about life outside competition:

• 74% hold a job outside of being a professional athlete
• 42% earn more from that other work than from their sport
• 93% reported some level of financial stress
• 64% said they sometimes or frequently consider leaving sport for financial reasons

Why this matters

This is the top-heavy economy in plain numbers. Beyond the small group of household names, the typical professional athlete is carrying real costs, leaning on a second job, and seeing little of the value their performance generates.

Sponsorship is one of the few levers that can change that — but only if more of it reaches more athletes, and only if more of each dollar ends up in the athlete's hands rather than dissipating along the way.

That's the problem Sportzap is built around: routing money and partnerships directly to athletes, so effort actually becomes earnings.