The International Olympic Committee is considering a blanket ban on trans athletes. Economics will soon enforce one in women’s professional sports, regardless.
According to The Times, the IOC is moving toward a transgender ban in the wake of scientific reviews showing “there were physical advantages to being born male that remained with athletes, including those who had taken treatment to reduce testosterone levels.”
When transgenderism first became a sports issue, it was about biological boys playing girls’ sports. It tellingly was, and is, almost never the reverse. Apparently, the IOC’s new data corroborate that males identifying as females have a competitive advantage.
Where the issue of biological males competing in female sports remains a debate, it is one over the left’s claim for equity in participation. However, as the preceding shows, there is no debate regarding equity in competition.
Significantly, the equity debate has primarily taken place in amateur sports where money is secondary. In professional sports, money is primary. People are paid to play them; people pay to invest in them; and people pay to watch them. As these sports’ financial incentives rise, so too the desire to seek them.
Transgenderism in professional women’s sports stands to endanger this money’s flow.
More biological men will be encouraged to seek to participate in these sports. If allowed in, their competitive advantage will entice more to follow and force more teams to sign them to remain competitive or to seek a competitive advantage.
On the spectator side, women’s interest in their sports will erode as biological males are allowed in and biological women lose places and competitions to them. Attendance and viewership will decline. Such declines will diminish sponsors’ and investors’ interest in these sports: If fewer women are participating and fewer people are watching or attending, what incentive do they have to keep investing?
It can be argued, and no doubt will be, that biological males who seek to participate in female sports sincerely identify as females. However, this identification does not negate the inequity of outcomes. And it is the equity of fair competition that drives sports and the public’s interest in them.
The threat to this equity in competition—or even any question about it—is the most damaging aspect of gambling in sports. We have seen this throughout history; we see it currently with allegations about players conspiring to fix NBA basketball and MLB baseball games.
A fundamental difference exists between equity in participation and equity in competition. The first is subjective; the second is objective. The pursuit of equity in competition is the reason that various sports restrict participants’ weight (boxing, wrestling, jockeys) and age (virtually all youth sports). Subjectively, these can be viewed as unfair. However, from the objective standard of equity in competition, they have long been ingrained.
When transgenderism was cast as an equity issue regarding participation, it was one thing; when cast as an issue of competition and outcomes, it is something else entirely.
Perhaps the IOC’s upcoming ruling will be the first step in professional women’s sports banning biological males from competition. Professional athletes have been fully allowed to compete in the Olympic games since 1988 and are now a fixture in them—a lucrative fixture. It is easy to see professional women athletes refusing to participate in the Olympics without a ban in place.
However, regardless of which way the IOC rules now, the objective standard will eventually prevail in women’s professional sports. As women’s professional sports grow in popularity, money is flowing in like never before. With increasing money, the incentive is building to protect the investment so many are making and the rewards so many athletes are reaping. Allowing biological men to compete in women’s professional sports threatens all these.
It will be interesting to hear the reaction from those on the left who continually shout that we must “follow the science.” Yet it is not only science that is making the argument for the ban. Economics is as well. If players, spectators, and investors fail to protect their sports’ integrity by ensuring its equity of competition, they run the risk of losing their sports altogether.
