By Joel Bekker and Pari Aryafar
In recognition of Women’s History Month, at the Ninth Annual New York Law School Sports Law Symposium, held on March 29, the first order of business was an all-female panel titled “Gender Equity in Sports” focusing on the treatment and marketing of females in sports. The discussion centered primarily on the treatment of female athletes in combat sports, with veteran Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighter, and founder and interim president of Project Spearhead, Leslie Smith, and GLORY Kickboxing and Muay Thai world champion Tiffany “Timebomb” van Soest joining Arent Fox partner and sports attorney Jennifer O’Sullivan and Carla Varriale, a sports management professor at Columbia University and partner at law firm Havkins Rosenfeld Ritzert and Varriale in Manhattan, on the panel. The four panelists brought immediate and critical attention to the unequal way female athletes are treated and promoted compared to their male counterparts.
Accomplished Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) competitor Leslie Smith has placed her career on the line by being an outspoken critic of her UFC employers, and the UFC’s promotional parent corporation, Zuffa, LLC. As the driving force behind Project Spearhead, Smith is attempting to unionize fighters signed to the UFC to gain the leverage necessary to collectively bargain for the rights and benefits that many other employees and independent contractors take for granted. In 2016, Smith required surgery to remove a tumor from her stomach. This procedure was not covered by the insurance plan provided by the UFC. It was only after Smith made her plight public knowledge on social media that the UFC decided to take action in assisting her. Smith has long stood for all fighters’ rights and that day [delete] she spent much of her time on the panel emphasizing and putting forth examples of the disparities in pay between male and female athletes for doing the same job.
“It’s a hard conversation to have,” Smith stated, “Because Ronda Rousey was one of the first millionaires to come out of the UFC, people believe it’s not difficult for a fighter to make that much money. However, that’s not the case for women in general.” Smith pointed out how women are negatively affected by the recent Reebok sponsorship deal with the UFC, “… the Reebok outfitting deal does not serve female fighters in any way. There are tiers they have arranged, so that you would get paid anywhere between $2,500-$3,500 for having up to four fights, $5,000 for up to 10 fights, and so on, [but] only fights that you’ve had under the Zuffa banner count towards that total.”
This means that the majority of female fighters are paid less than they are worth. This is because fighters must fight in other professional promotions like Ring of Combat, or the all-female Invicta Fighting Championship in order to build a record, gain experience, and catch the eye of UFC CEO Dana White. Then, when these athletes are signed to the UFC, the fights that raised the athletes to that level are disregarded in terms of the sponsorship tiers. This affects both male and female athletes, but females more prominently because it usually takes them more fights to get noticed and signed to the UFC. Smith went on to quote Dana White, who once famously said, “Women will never fight in the UFC”, and although his stance has obviously changed on that issue, female athletes still do not have the same opportunities as males to accrue fights, which would generate income for them, nor the same opportunities to be the main event fights on big cards. This further inhibits the earning potential of female combat sports athletes and exacerbates the insult dealt them in the Reebok deal.
A pioneer in both Kickboxing and Muay Thai (Thai-style Kickboxing, using elbow strikes and throws, as well as punches, kicks, and knee strikes), Tiffany van Soest agreed wholeheartedly with Smith’s assessment of the situation. Having been the first female champion for both the Lion Fight Muay Thai and GLORY Kickboxing promotions (the biggest in the world), van Soest has had her fair share of negative experiences. Mired in a very public battle between her and Lion Fight promotions, a few years ago, van Soest was forced to put her championship belt up for sale to compensate for the lack of payment she was owed by the promoter. Many fighters already face poor treatment from their promoters (except for the few more widely recognizable names, such as Conor McGregor, Brock Lesnar, and Ronda Rousey), but female fighters fare much worse in terms of general handling, promotion, and pay scale, van Soest asserted, “I’ve only been a main event once, and I have fought for championships at the highest level and defended my title several times in the last eight years… It’s almost impossible to be a main event if you’re a woman…” She went on to draw a causal link, adding, “…we are not paid the same amount as the men because we are told that we are ‘not a big enough draw’. It’s not fair, because we aren’t even promoted enough [to become] those draws.”
Jennifer O’ Sullivan, a sports lawyer and former commissioner and CEO of Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS), the top-level women’s professional soccer league in the US, discussed the plight of female athletes in working towards equal pay and treatment. After starting her career at the NFL, she’s found that “Working towards equality is a cultural shift. The more that our youth sees women as equals on the playing field, the more that women get those opportunities. “However,” she noted, “it’s a frustrating place to be in when you have to decide between taking what you can get or fighting for more.” This statement highlights the tension among female athletes, between the desire to promote and provide for oneself and one’s family, and the desire to see all women treated more equally.
Speaking about shifting the cultural paradigm, Smith put forth that “the foundation of most men’s worldview is based on the physical superiority of men over women. That’s something I deal with daily. I train with guys, and every time I physically best them, they start floundering to find an excuse to why I beat them.” Addressing the issue van Soest raised regarding the promotion of female fighters, and their opportunities to be the main event on fight cards, Smith said, “The more prominently women are featured in sporting events, the more people’s opinions can change. The more that women can be featured and get those spots, it’ll help change those perspectives.”
Smith believes that unionizing will help level the playing field, but there is still a long road to go in the way the female fighters are marketed and promoted. It’s long been stated that “sex sells” – and sex appeal is an important aspect in many fighting promoters’ advertising strategies. They feature more prominently female fighters who are considered to be more physically attractive than other fighters. They pressure fighters to change their usual style in favor of a more ‘glam’ look requiring the talents of professional hair and make-up artists, not professional fighters. Out of the many combat sport promoters that exist today, Invicta FC is the only one owned and operated by a woman, and in promoting only female fighters, embraces and attends to the needs of women.
Invicta FC owner Shannon Knapp pays attention to the details that many others overlook, such as paying for professional hair braiders for the fighters at the events, a seemingly innocuous, but necessary and expensive consideration for any fighter with long hair. Both Smith and van Soest had [delete] fought under the Invicta banner, and both were pleased with the way they were treated and accommodated.
“If you really think about it, you only get to fight three times a year if you’re lucky,” said van Soest, “So to follow the UFC tiers, you’ll have to put in a whole year and a half of work to only get $1,000 more, when the costs of fight camp are so high and you may not be working during that time to focus on training. The monopolization from Reebok does not allow fighters to get outside sponsors. Before, they could may [delete] have a smaller fight purse but could get more money with their fight sponsorships. Now, they can’t [get that income] and they already get paid so little.”
Even with the small pool of female fighters in the UFC, the largest fight promotion in the world, there are only four weight classes for female fighters, and not enough athletes in each class.
“There should be more opportunities for women to fight in that case, but it doesn’t happen that way,” Smith said. “There might be one to two female fights on a card, if we are lucky, when there are about thirteen fights per card. On top of that, sexuality is being marketed. The more sexy they are, the more they are promoted and the more opportunities they get. The more they play to their attributes, the more attention they get… which isn’t what men have to do. Just within women, there are differences in the way they are marketed, but then we are told no one actually wants to watch us fight.”
Smith’s remarks raise the contradiction in the marketing of female combat athletes — in a sport where toughness and strength are so important, female athletes are told to play up their softness and femininity to attract male viewers, but then the same women are told that men don’t want to see “pretty girls” fight. “It’s frustrating to say the least,” van Soest stated, as Smith and O’Sullivan nodded in unison. “It’s like, ‘Want to make a little money? Show a little skin.’ We are being told to sacrifice our own ethics to have the opportunity to be promoted.” She added that she has no problems with women using their looks or sexuality to attract more fans and followers, as long as it is each particular woman’s desire to do so, not because a promoter tells her to.
Moderator Carla Varriale supplemented the conversation with factoids and anecdotes that made the audience audibly gasp, including that of the treatment of a particular female referee. “Lauren Holtkamp,” she began, “the third female to serve as a referee in the history of the NBA. The only things that initially popped up [in reference to] her on Google, were about her haircut and her marriage. In a post-game interview, L.A. Clippers All-Star point guard Chris Paul criticized Holtkamp saying that “refereeing wasn’t for her.” While that was an incredibly sexist, and disrespectful comment, Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA, only fined [Paul] $21,000. While that sounds like a hefty fine, he makes $21 million a year, it was only a tenth of a percent of his income.”
Smith used that anecdote to draw a parallel and bring attention to the mistreatment of Cris “Cyborg” Justino, arguably the best female fighter in MMA. “Cyborg has been called everything, from ‘a man in heels’, to ‘Wanderlei Silva [(a male fighter)] in a dress’. She had been accused of hiding male genitalia, most of this coming from the higher-ups of the UFC, including the company’s president,” Smith said disappointedly. “[Cyborg] had to use social media to appeal to the masses and remind people that wasn’t okay.”
The most glaring and blatant example of the disparate treatment of male and female athletes was discussed after the panel discussion, but was pointed at van Soest. In addition to the normal single-fight matchups on a fight card, GLORY Kickboxing promotion features one-night, four-competitor tournaments in which the winners of the first two fights in the bracket return later in the show to fight each other. The winner of these tournaments is often rewarded with a title shot and a larger than average pay check. For example, when Joseph Schilling won such a tournament he was given a title shot, and a $100,000 payday. The victory was celebrated in the ring with Mr. Schilling being given an oversized novelty check touting the amount of money in letters big enough to be seen on camera, even amidst the rain of confetti. Van Soest, in contrast, won a similar four-fighter tournament, given a similar title shot, but her check was decidedly smaller both in size and amount, and not presented in the ring, in front of the crowd, on camera. Her check was presented to her in her dressing room, with no fanfare, and for one quarter the amount ($25,000) that Mr. Schilling received for the same work.
While Invicta FC seemingly promotes and treats their athletes fairly and focuses the marketing and promotion of its athletes on the fighters’ skills and personality more than what the fighters look like, not all promoters do the same thing. One of the reasons for this difference is the existence of a woman in a position of leadership and control within the company. Knapp is one of the few, if not only, women in such a position in combat sports promotions across the globe. This made Knapp’s company very attractive to female fighters. As van Soest put it, “Having a woman on my side within the group of men making powerful decisions, felt like I had support and a bit of help for what I needed.”
Smith agreed and noted the growing popularity of the all-female promotion company, in that “the main content viewed on UFC Fight Pass, a digital library to view fights and promotions, is Invicta FC”, but conceded that “… money has always been an issue for the promotion, making it difficult to get to the large scale the other promotions are on. However, we must keep in mind that even though men have created this patriarchal system, it’s women participating in it that helps to perpetuate it as well.”
O’Sullivan continued to address the lack of professional sports leagues for female athletes, “There’s only been two other leagues in the world of U.S. sports that can be comparable to Invicta. And [those are] the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) and NWSL (National Women’s Soccer League),” O’Sullivan explained. “The Lingerie Football League (LFL) [(now known as the Legends Football League)], an all-female league, might count, but they are professional athletes who are forced to play football in lingerie, which is incredibly uncomfortable and takes away from their athleticism in the sport, making it mainly about their sexuality. They have a comparably shorter career span to men, and they don’t have a lot of time to work at their career. This exploits these athletes, objectifying them. It’s disheartening to see women feel like that’s the only way they can be successful. It’s similar to cheerleaders only being accessories to football games, even though they are talented athletes, but women not being in positions of power, where they feel like they don’t have a choice.”
Smith reinforced O’Sullivan’s sentiment, “It’s upsetting to see that women who should be focusing on their athletic prowess, are instead worried if a certain angle of the camera will make their body not look good. The marketing is trying to get everything they can out of a person, exploiting them and capitalizing on everything they can. They will frequently exploit women’s sexuality in a way they won’t do to men.”
With the topic of body portrayal up in the air, van Soest described some of the sexual harassment she faces daily as a female athlete available to the public on social media. “I deal with disgusting and vulgar messages all the time, and I know every other female athlete does as well,” she said. “I’m constantly objectified for my body, no matter what I put on social media. Even if I’m training or talking about anything else. Even if you’re putting things out there, not trying to be sexual, you’ll be getting sexually harassed. People feel like they can hide behind a phone or a screen and can get away with it.”
At that point the panelists’ frustration with the situation was palpable. Turning the corner and focusing the conversation on possible positive changes, Varriale asked “How can we combat these inequalities? How can we advance gender equality and gender equity?” To which O’Sullivan responded, “Adding more diversity, seeing more women out there in general. Also, more men just stepping up and standing up for their female counterparts.” Van Soest spoke to the importance of female athletes speaking out in solidarity, adding that, “There’s strength in numbers. More women speaking up and sharing these experiences” would help combat the inequality.
“It’s important that the standout female athletes say yes to all the opportunities they can to get in front of people,” Smith concluded. “More importantly than anything else, we need to get women in positions of power. That’s the only way we can make real changes happen.”
