Bizarrely, it was left to CNN’s Don Lemon to explain to his fellow CNN cohosts how revenue generation works and how, in the realm of professional sports, those players and teams that people tend to watch more and thus generate more revenue are the ones that earn more money.
That’s particularly important to understand in the context of professional soccer, as male soccer players tend to make far more than female soccer players for what the female players allege is the same work. Those female players, people like far-left Megan Rapinoe, then use the disparity in pay to argue that either soccer teams are sexist, they need to be paid more so the men’s and women’s pay is “equal,” or some combination thereof.
Megan Rapinoe, for instance, said in 2020 that“Men are so often paid and compensated on the potential that they show, not necessarily what they’ve done. And women are so often paid on what they’ve actually done — which normally I would say, we outperform what our contract was.”
Adding to that, she said, “The amount of money that [the women’s team players] could possibly earn in our contract — compared to the amount of money that the men could possibly earn in the contract — is very different. We’ve been very successful … and to get paid about the same dollar-for-dollar amount [as the men] — that’s sort of at the heart of pay inequity and gender discrimination.”
The problem is people actually watch men’s soccer. They don’t tend to watch women’s soccer. So the men are paid more than the women, as they bring in more revenue. That’s what Don Lemon had to explain to his female cohosts, and they didn’t like it…not one bit. Watch that here:
Don Lemon destroys his female co-hosts over unequal pay in sports: pic.twitter.com/Z25MrrAeen
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 15, 2022
As you can hear in the clip, Lemon, discussing why men make more, said,” I know everyone’s gonna hate me go ahead but the men’s team makes more money. If they make more money then they should get more money.”
One of the others on the show then tried interjecting, saying, “because you know why?”
Lemon, continuing, said the obvious, which is “Because people are more interested [in men’s soccer].”
The co-host got mad with Lemon for stating the obvious and pushed back, saying: “But he gets who takes part of like, I have big issue with this guys WNBA same thing is happening to them in social media. Hold on, hold on hold on. Until big media companies, big tech companies, advertisers invest and put them on their airwaves more and allow people we don’t know and allow people to see it more and gain more fans, then you will push toward more quality but if they are blocked in so many ways and not invested in as much.”
Lemon, then rebutting that after saying he is “not sexist,” said, “I understand what you’re saying. But not everybody honestly has the same skill.” Continuing, he said, “if the sport makes more money that means there’s more money available or money because people are more interested in guys Am I wrong? You guys don’t want to say anything. I will go to a sports bar if there’s a woman’s basketball game on I’m just being on air less people will say literally, guys, I don’t want to watch this. I’m just telling you…”
Of course, hearing that infuriated them, and it’s wild that Don Lemon was the one to explain how soccer earnings work. But, in all fairness, he did a pretty good job. No one watches women’s sports, so of course, female athletes are paid less.
