Sports fans hear all the time that professional athletes get paid millions upon millions of dollars a year simply to play a sport, but that isn’t the case for everyone. In 2015 alone, Floyd Mayweather earned $300 million, Cristiano Ronaldo earned $79.6 million and LeBron James earned $64.8 million dollars. This is much different than the highest paid female athlete, Maria Sharapova, who made a small amount in comparison, at only $29.7 million. In fact, there are only two females in the top 100 paid athletes in the world.

In 2014, the U.S. Men’s National Team shocked the Americans by bringing home a win, tie and loss in the group stage of the FIFA Men’s World Cup. The following year in 2015, the U.S. Women’s National Team made the U.S. the only country in the world to win its third FIFA World Cup, something that didn’t come as a surprise to many people. Yet, despite the disparity in performances by the two teams, the women’s team still gets paid significantly less than the men’s team. When the German men’s team took home the World Cup trophy in 2014, they also brought with them $35 million, in comparison to the $2 million the U.S. women’s team earned. Because of the smaller amounts earned from winning big tournaments, the athletes on the women’s teams make less. Even some of the most well-known female athletes lack the pay that men of the same caliber make.

“Abby Wambach for example, the leading scorer of international goals in all of soccer men or women, made $190,000 last year. That’s about what Argentinian star Lionel Messi makes in one day,” wrote CBS News’ Jericka Duncan on cbsnews.com. While both stars are very marketable and make millions of dollars on endorsements by companies such as Nike and Adidas, the base salaries have a huge gap. In the National Women’s Soccer League, the average player makes less than $100,000 yearly, while a player in Major League Soccer averages $307,000 annually, and many make much more.

There is one main factor contributing to the discrepancy of wages between male and female athletes and that is its viewers. During a group stage game of USMNT playing Ghana, there were 16 million viewers, while the championship game of the USWNT vs. China only gained 5.7 million viewers. For female athletes to make more money, they need more people to tune into their games and pay to watch them play. It seems like a majority of sports fans would choose to go to a men’s game rather a female’s game because the athletes are quicker and stronger, and there is much more advertisement. Until there is more recognition for women’s sports, the pay rates will be uneven. If there is ever a time when women’s and men’s sports get paid the same amount, it will not be for a long time.