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Prize Money in Sports

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Playing professional sports all over the world has many advantages. The biggest advantage for many people has to be the amount of prize money that they receive from winning the top spots in their chosen sport. Sport has a lot in common with normal business practices but many people don't realise it. In sports just like in business, the more popular the sport is the more people will pay to watch the sport, so in turn more revenue will be generated by the organising body of the sport. This leads to a bigger show being put on for the pleasure of all those paying fans and in turn the top athletes are paid huge salaries because they bring in so much money. The more popular the sport, the higher the prize money will be.

However we have to stop here and ask what is the world's most popular sport then and which sport has the highest prize money given out to the winning team or individual athlete. An article online gives us a run down of the sports that pay out the highest prize money funds in the world. The list goes something like this; at the top spot is the FIFA World Cup which gave out $21 million to the winners Italy and gave out $260 million to all other participating teams for a total payout of more than $280 million. Next on this list is the Champions League tournament which pays out $170 million to the winning team and $60 million to the losing team. Third on this list is the Dubai World Cup in horse racing which awards $22 million as prize money. The list goes on with The US Open giving out $20 million in prize fund and so on covering boxing, the Royal Ascot Race and the FedEx Golf tournament. This list shows us that the most popular sports in the world according to prize money are football at the top spot and second place as well with the World Cup and Champions League. Horse racing is very prominent with two events in the top ten. Boxing and tennis also feature in the top ten as does cricket but a specific T20 event.

Is all this money justified to be paid out to winning teams? Why does the World Cup winning team get so much money? Maybe as previously stated it is to do with how popular the sport is and how much money the sport or tournament is able to generate in revenue. The revenue that will be generated from the current World Cup being held in South Africa will be, "a total of 1.1 billion euros". So with such a large revenue pot being generated, FIFA can justify paying out so much money to the winning team and to every other team in the tournament. There is an aspect of this that is often overlooked; because the prize money is so high, every team plays as if their life depends on it to get a slice of that huge prize fund. This means more exciting football for the viewers and so more of them come to the stadium, buy tickets and watch the game. Those extra bought tickets increase the revenue of FIFA and so the prize fund increases accordingly. It is a circle of good football being played leading to more bought tickets and increased revenue and it just continues to go around in this manner. So the high prize money is understandable in all the top ten sports in the above mentioned list.

Now we come to the question of why men and men's teams get more prize money than women do in the world of sports. There are many sides to this argument and a debate happened recently that had arguments from both side of the table. Those in favour of equal pay said this, "Sport or not, the widely accepted principle of equal pay in the workplace ought to be applied – after all, these are professionals with jobs that should be treated like any other". The other side has this to say, "Of course women should be paid equal pay – for equal work. Sports fans are interested in the highest levels of performance, so the highest athletic prizes should go to the competitors who are strongest, fastest, and most powerful or who have the greatest endurance". Whatever happens, this debate will rage on for many years but an interesting fact is that recently the prize money for Wimbledon has been made equal for men and women in the tournament.

Prize money will continue to increase along with salaries of players in the world of sports. It is a natural fact that has many reasons and the pot of money to be won will continue to inspire athletes and teams to perform at their highest levels for many years to come.

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