Women in Sports

Women athletes are the big news right now with more than 40 of 2026 US Women Winter Olympians returning home from Milan with at least one medal in hand. 

When the women’s hockey team rallied to beat Canada for the gold in overtime both men and women cheered.  The U.S. Women's Olympic Team has participated and medaled in every Olympic Winter Games since women's ice hockey was first included in 1998, when they won gold in a nail-biter against the Canadians. In total, the U.S. women’s team has won three gold medals (2026, 2018, 1998) four silver medals (2002, 2010, 2014, 2022) and one bronze medal (2006).

For women hockey players there are just eight teams in the Professional Women’s Hockey League, compared to 32 in the NHL.

After several other attempts to unify players failed, the PWHL came together in 2022 through new financial partnerships, including one with BJK Enterprises—led by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter and Billie Jean King, the woman who fought and won for player equality in tennis over fifty years ago.  

Through the early ‘70s women’s tennis was almost an after-thought, lower in terms of prestige and money than men’s. 

Born in Long Beach California in 1943, Billie Jean first gained international recognition at just 18 when she and partner Karen Hantze Susman became the youngest pair to win the Wimbledon women’s doubles title. She would go on to win singles championship in 1966, 1967 and 1968. She took her first U.S. Open singles championship in 1967, and the Australian Open singles title the following year. 

In 1971, Billie Jean became the first woman athlete to earn over $100,000 in prize money, but when she won the U.S. Open the next year she received $15,000 less than the men’s champion, Ilie Năstase.

Billie Jean leveraged her success and influence to demand change and campaigned relentlessly for equal prize money between the men’s and women’s games. In 1973 King, along with 60 pioneering athletes, founded the Women’s Tennis Association to build equal opportunities for women in tennis.   

Bobby Riggs, a 55-year-old retired player turned promoter and tennis hustler, and a self-proclaimed ‘male chauvinist’, opposed women receiving equal prize money.  He claimed the female game was inferior and that he could still beat any of the top female players, challenging King to a match to prove him wrong.  She refused, but his second pick, Margaret Court, accepted, to earn a guaranteed $20,000 for the match, more than she had earned for winning both the 1973 Australian and French Open women's singles titles. 

Court was 30 years old, a new mom, and ranked the number one female player in the world for the 7^th time. Riggs had retired in 1941 after three Wimbledon titles and six major title wins.  The match was played on Mother's Day and television viewers watched Bobby present Court with a bouquet before soundly winning 6–2, 6–1.  Dubbed the "Mother's Day Massacre" it put Riggs on the covers of Time and Sports Illustrated.

King, who won the U.S. Open, French Open, and Wimbledon to claim three Grand Slam titles the year before, considered his challenges a publicity gimmick, but now agreed to a match.  “I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn’t win that match. It would ruin the women’s [tennis] tour and affect all women’s self-esteem. To beat a 55-year-old guy was no thrill for me. The thrill was exposing a lot of new people to tennis.”

They met on September 20 in the Houston Astrodome. With an estimated 90 million prime-time viewers, it was one of the most watched televised sporting events of all time; it’s still the most watched tennis match.  

King entered the court on a litter carried by four bare-chested dressed in the style of ancient Roman slaves while Riggs arrived in a rickshaw drawn by female models. Riggs presented King with a giant Sugar Daddy lollipop, his sponsor, and she handed him a piglet in reference to his vocal chauvinism. 

Billie Jean would beat Bobby Riggs in straight sets, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3, and earned the winner-take-all prize of $100,000.

King's win is considered a milestone in public acceptance of women's tennis.

Over her career, Billie Jean won a record 20 Wimbledon titles, 13 United States titles (including four singles), four French titles (one singles), and two Australian titles (one singles) for a total of 39 Grand Slam titles.

While tennis and golf have evened the ‘paying field’ there is still a long way to go women in other sports. For example, NBA players receive 50% of shared revenue from their teams and leagues, while WNBA players receive only 20%. The average NBA player makes $7.5 million a year. In the WNBA? A player’s average salary is just $116,000 a year.

Someone should tell Billie Jean.