The best analogy to this is the best sales guy at a small company v the worst sales guys at a big company. The best/small guy earns 10% commission. On his 5M in sales he makes himself an outstanding 500k commission. The worst/big guy gets paid the same commission, only does 1M in sales so he comes in at a cool $100k. At both companies a portion of the profits are split with the sales team. Unfortunately for the best/small guy, the company only does 10M in total revenue. The profit sharing pool is a measly $100k and he has to split it with 3 other guys bringing his compensation to $525k. The worst/big guy may have not be very good at his job, but his company did 500M in sales. The pool to share is a whopping $5M. There are 10 sales guys at the company, splitting the pool evenly, raking an extra $500k a piece. Bringing the worst/big guys total to $600k. The big/small guy ends up earning less, not because he didn’t make more sales, but because the pool of compensation simply ended up being smaller.

The pool the men’s team draws from during the World Cup was recently $400M. The Women’s $30M. Estimated total revenues for the men’s World Cup were north of $5B. Total revenues for the women’s World Cup are apparently under some scrutiny, but the biggest number I have seen is $131M. The women’s team is way better and sells more locally. The men just draw from a pool that dwarfs the pool the women draw from.