Match Highlights: Prize money in sport: What can football learn from cricket? – Key Moments

It is indisputable that market forces – supply and demand for ticket sales, sponsorship and TV deals – determine revenues for sports and therefore what they can spend on prize money, pay and investment in grassroots.

But it does not determine the order of a governing body’s spending priorities.

Some sports have shown that prioritising equal prize money is having a positive knock-on effect in terms of bringing in more revenue, while sponsors increasingly want to be associated with an ethos of equality.

Squash’s governing body, the Professional Squash Association (PSA), has seen its turnover increase 236.7% in the past five years since merging the men’s and women’s tours and introducing equal prize money at all its events.

“We have not cannibalised any of the men’s prize money to subsidise the women’s,” PSA chief executive Alex Gough said.

“We set the level [of prize money at events] and we’ve been successful at attracting more tournaments, so the prize money has gone up that way. There is a bit more profile so our commercials have gone up and up much more considerably.”

Participation numbers are up too and this has translated into a 36% increase in five years in the number of professional players. Those female players are earning 65.7% more than they were five years ago.

The ECB is hoping cricket will reap the same rewards, with Barrett-Wild saying: “The Hundred will really help to raise the profile of women’s cricket and catapult women’s cricket to a new and wider audience.”