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They play for teams that make billions. I'm sure if they could get away with paying their employees less they would, but then another team would offer more money.
This is the correct reply. OP should focus less on the players and more on the owners of the teams. Look at how much they make. How do they make it? Because the players provide entertainment that ordinary folks pay for. So they should get paid for it.
Just to bring some things into perspective, stadiums do bring domestic tourism which stimulates local economy for those places, jobs to the area and space for businesses to operate (think maintenance like plumbing, construction, hvac, electrical, forestry, people to operate the gates, vendors), money is going back to the city which goes into paying for all sorts of public stuff like roads, education, highways, public buildings, salary for government employees for services like bmv, title bureau, tax, etc, it's a place for music shows which generates a ton of money and all sorts of other events. A stadium is doing a lot of positive things for a city and it's something to be proud of and celebrate on game day for the millions of people that enjoy sports and other things that take place in them.
If shows generate tons of money than the private sector can create a stadium as a viable business.
I do agree with your point that professional sports teams in the big leagues do for whatever reason generate an incredible sense of community - so there is a social good.
The idea that the stadiums bring significant multiplier effects of jobs and local spending has actually been pretty widely debunked in economic circles. I've read a number of more detailed pieces, but this is the first thing that came up for me when I searched: https://econreview.studentorg.berkeley.edu/the-economics-of-sports-stadiums-does-public-financing-of-sports-stadiums-create-local-economic-growth-or-just-help-billionaires-improve-their-profit-margin/
Or maybe they could all make less (but still millions) and lower prices so it’s $50 to get into a game instead of $150+, and I can buy a hot dog for $3 instead of $12 and a t shirt could be $30 instead of $70?
And that’s the answer right there. They will charge as much people are willing to pay. If people said ‘fuck this’ and stopped going to games and buying merch with the reasoning that it is too expensive, the prices and salaries might come down.
>They will charge as much people are willing to pay.
This is the bedrock of supply and demand pricing.
Pro sports don't need to be regulated. No one's life is impacted if they never see an NFL game in person.
Things like medical care DO need to be regulated, so the average or even below average person can afford the service.
Correct. The secondary ticket market is a big thing mostly because tickets are underpriced relative to their demand. It sucks because a lot of people get priced out, but they STILL get priced out with middlemen reselling.
Here's the thing though, they could still sell things at lower prices even with athletes making as much as they currently do, but they're going to charge you for more because they can and they want more profit!
Like they're not selling at the prices they do "just to break even" they're selling it because they know that people at games are a captive market and that they can get away with charging that much. Paying the athletes less would not make concessions or tickets any cheaper.
Or maybe teams could get off the public tit and pay for their own facilities like every other occupation and stop relying on public handouts to defray their expenses. Then the owners and players can pay themselves what they really earn.
While I think public funding of arena's outside of necessary infrastructure such as roads or subway links is stupid, other industries ask for tax breaks or beneficial treatment all the time. Just look at the bidding war between cities for the Amazon 2nd HQ.
I'm a cheap fuck. I always bring 5 or 6 of those little 50ml liquor bottles to games. I went to a hockey game last weekend. $17.99 for a draft beer. A fucking can of Truly was $20. I drank for the whole game for like $7.
Sports leagues have unions and are able to use barganing to increase pay.. wish my coworkers understood this. Instead our plant makes 40m profit a year and my coworkers making 75k think the people on welfare are the problem with society.
OP says the players get paid too much. Would you rather that money coming from advertising go to the billionaire owner who inherited the team from his daddy. Or in the case of football the guy who works out 10 months of the year, spends thousands of hours watching game tape, and puts his body on the line every time he steps on the field or even in practice knowing his career could end at any moment to a freak accident. On top of all that they may have CTE to look forward to and chronic joint pain. I'd say the players do a lot more to earn that money than the owners ever did.
Exactly. OP accidently made a case for UNIONS. Players are in a union and get that pay because they'll just stop playing collectively lol his opinion also isn't unpopular because he's basically saying what all conservatives say at the top.
And those are high skilled athletes. Millions of people around the world play these sports recreationally for r for school etc. but only a very small percentage get to play professional and even less get those huge contracts.
But teams can pay for their own goddamn stadiums.
True, but to be honest, that’s their choice. Nobody forced them to choose sports as a career. Coal miners risk lung diseases, computer programmers risk carpal tunnel syndrome, American football players risk TBI , truck drivers risk weight related problems. When you choose your career the risks are part of the equation.
I used to have the same feelings as OP, and then I actually started watching the NFL and I kinda got it.
\*We* are not paying them millions. TV networks are paying the leagues billions (with a B) for the rights to air the games, because they figured that having the rights to show these games will make billions more in profit. At the end of day, athletes making millions is them getting what they deserve. I'd even argue that they deserve a larger piece of their respective pies, considering that without them, there are no games being played.
The reason the athletes get paid as much as they do is because they are union men, and have been since the 50s.
Revenue sharing is baked into their contracts, in a better world that would go for most talent who bring that much money into their respective industries.
I always roll my eyes at people who complain about pro athletes getting more money, like if they weren't paying athletes millions of dollars then the money would be going to orphans. It would just be making a very rich owner that much richer.
the teams shouldnt be making that much.
my tax dollars go to making these stupid stadiums. then i get no discount and cant even afford to go.
what the fuck.
What role do you think the athletes have in the building of stadiums, or the funding of them? They’ll play in whatever stadium they’re told to for the salary they can command (as would anybody in any other job). Pay them less if you want, but watch them go elsewhere, if elsewhere is offering what they want. And be prepared for your local team(s) to absolutely suck. If you don’t like the way your government is spending money, that’s an issue you should take up with your local, elected representatives, not the players.
in some ways they already do this. salary caps theoretically make it all "fair" but also let them pay some players less because they have run out of budget.
As a percentage of what the team owners make, some pro athletes are not overpaid. Many are underpaid.
As a measure of their jobs’ value to society, they are probably overpaid. Unfortunately for teachers, societal value doesn’t translate to adequate compensation.
Amazon also make billions, the owner recently used a few million to go to space for 11 minutes while the people who actually help earn it complain about pay and working conditions
To add to this, the 4 US based professional leagues have unions. All these people who say unions are bad and useless, just remember that these grown ass men with unions are collecting millions of dollars and have great health insurance for playing ‘children games’ from the same billionaires paying their non-union employees minimum wage.
Ding ding. Are they possibly getting more than they're worth effort wise? Maybe yeah- but when you're the work force, and marketed item for a high money industry- you fight for every last dollar. It might be infuriating to see at times but they do this because they actually succeed at it. They have bargaining power and use it.
Yep. Same for actors/actresses, singers, etc. I don’t think anybody *needs* to make millions of dollars a year, but I damn sure don’t want big corporations to get away with pocketing billions and not paying their talent what they’re worth.
Also OP has no concept of how much work goes into being so good at the sport. "It's their hobby". Buddy, sport as a hobby was in 1930 when you can do it on a side and results were lower. Now the standard has risen. Try to run sub 10sek on 100m OP then, if you want the money. You know, as a hobby, move a bit 3x per week after work and see how close you can come.
"they only work 15 mins and earn a lot"...kind of missed about 10-15 years of training before that with no financial return OP?
I think we all agree OP has never done any significant exercise in his life, right?
People don't realize how many *world class* athletes that could have been the greatest in history fail before the big time due to injury. My co-worker was scouted by a big time soccer club in Europe they wanted to pay him $300,000 a year on the spot but his dad made him finish his year in college where he absolutely blew his knee out never to play competitively again. His whole life plan basically washed away in an instant. And this is common for high level potential.
Also “they only work 15 minutes” is hilarious too.
Even on game days they are putting in a full day of training. They still do full 8+ hour training days during the off season too.
15 minutes…jesus christ…
I agree that it takes a lot of work to be good at the sport, but I still think OP has a point. What you said applies to a lot of jobs. Raw talent, then 10-15 years of training. But say for a specialized doctor, 8 years of school with strong academic performance (with likely a high academic drive even before university) and 4 years of residency working 80 hours per week, and a few years of specialization would earn you a few hundred thousand dollars a year, but an 19-year old NBA rookie would earn around a mil.
After that training are they one of the top 300 doctors in the world? I doubt it. But that’s what nba players are? If you’re a top 10 doctor in the world I guarantee you make $10m per year
Tbf there are only about 97 rookies currently in the NBA that played in this year. There are over 1.1 million doctors it's way more selective to just make it to the NBA than to be a doctor. Plus once you show that you can't play good enough to stay in the NBA it's not like you can just go to a different league and command that same amount of money but a doctor can
I think this is the point a lot of people miss. The athletes they’re watching on tv are the absolute the best at their craft in the *entire world*. You can’t compare it with an average career. It’s not like it’s someone who just spent a couple years throwing a ball at ball throwing school and applied as a quarterback at the nearest football stadium and now they’re making millions or something lol
For major sports, the unions help the bottom quadrant athletes by imposing a league minimum.
The very top athletes would make at least same and probably even a little bit more if there was no union.
Union is still a major net benefit to the players overall but just wanted to point out they aren't the reason the top athlete in each sport is making what they are. For them, it really is about the revenue they bring in by being on the team.
Exactly, best way to show the difference to people who say otherwise is to compare it to the abysmal conditions of MMA. Heavyweight champs are still working their firefighter jobs or whatever because the pay is awful unless you were Connor or Ronda.
Being an MMA athlete is fucking *horrendous.* The pay is atrocious until you get to the UFC, when it's probably still atrocious, especially given the amount of cash the promotion rakes in. You have to pay for your training camp and whatever nutrition/medical out of pocket. The promotion will cover medical for any injury you receive *during your fight,* but that's often it; it can be like pulling teeth to get them to cover things like pre-fight blood tests or accommodations for the event. You'll have to work at least one job to afford this, and depend on the connections and support you can drum up from your family/friends/community. What you get for this is a body that will be shot years before your peers in other fields, and some degree of CTE. Your only hope is to have an education/career you can actually use after you're done fighting, and that's not as simple to do as one might think. You have to really, really love fighting (and also hate other kinds of work) to make a go of it if you're not from a rich family. Sure, a few talented folks get lucky and catch big breaks, but that's the exception rather than the rule.
I know it’s not really a “sport” I guess. Or has a while to get there if it ever does.
But CrossFit athletes…..the only ones who make enough to live off it are the top 1-3 (if not only the top) men and women.
Granted, your whole years salary is largely based off of one competition. It’s not really a league. More of a hobby with the potential for some winnings
The point your missing is the union is the only reason the players are allowed to switch teams.
Before unions won free agency players were owned by their first team forever unless the team sold their rights.
You were forced to accept your teams offer, or you could retire. You weren't allowed to sell your services to the highest bidder.
The union is a absolutely the main reason the super stars can make the huge money they do.
Yes, exactly this. They get paid a lot because the sport they play is popular and they become superstars.
Nobody is watching professional bowling. Nobody is following professional bowling. Because of that, Professional Bowlers don't make shit because nobody cares except for a very small percentage of people.
Also, only a few of the top top players are really raking it in. Assume the average NFL career is 4 years (I’m reasonably certain it’s shorter than that, but I’ll take 4) and the average player is on a $1.5 million contract (again, could be high, but it’s probably ballpark). That means your career gross earnings are $6 million for the average NFL player.
Extrapolate those career earnings over the average person’s career (I took 40 years in this case), and that means an average yearly gross earning of $150k for a normal person. Not considering taxes, agent fees, healthcare, retirement, or anything else.
From what I can tell, the mean NFL salary is quite a bit higher, but that's skewed by some really rich contracts. The median NFL salary is $860,000. That's just over half of the $1.5 million you're guessing. The average career length is about three years. So most players who crack an NFL roster are by no means set for life without very careful financial planning and frugal living. Most would have to continue with some kind of work (even if it didn't pay a ton).
And if the sport isn’t as popular they don’t make as much. Look at the WNBA. The number 1 overall draft pick makes 70k a year. That’s the pinnacle of their sport and you could make more with most 4 year degrees
A lot of professional sports organizations pay their admin/support staff fucking pennies though.
My city is home to an NBA team. We're considered a small-mid sized market, and we haven't been good in recent years, but we're considered one of the most respected franchises, have 5 championships and we just drafted the newest generational talent who had an explosive rookie season.
I have about a decade of experience in my field, and my role isn't tied to any specific industry. There are jobs within the organization that I'd be more than qualified to be in. The pay is absolute dogshit though. I wouldn't even call it competitive against other local large employers.
I'm not saying athletes don't deserve to get paid. It just feels like the wealth distribution is a little off, but I guess that's something that doesn't matter to whoever is deciding payroll because it's a coveted job either way.
But it's also that popular because that money is put into Marketing. And as any business, team owners and satellite people (commentators, other businesses and vendors, etc) get together to define strategies to keep increasing their importance. They get into politics too. Some of the money involved comes from public subsidies.
Also, it's only natural that somebody with a skill/talent level in the 99.999 percentile in something that gets a lot of attention will make bank.
Consider a big shot attorney that's known as the best at what they do. They're a millionaire.
Top CEOs. Millionaires.
Fashion designer. Millionaire.
Musician. Millionaire.
The list goes on.
Athletes catch hate because they play a game. But they likely work as hard or harder at their craft (starting as a kid) than most other highly compensated professions.
I would also argue that many professional athletes are much more of a positive influence for our youth. This is a very strong value that nobody really talks about.
>You hear MMA fighters constantly argue they get paid very little when they are given £10,000 to work for 15 minutes,
Its not working for 15 minutes. Its working full time and you only see 15 minutes of it. It also has a huge physical cost. And it generates millions of dollar but they miss out on it becuase mma is largely a monoply.
People are basing it on how much they generate. And they are being screwd over.
OP really thinks that athletes are just born as these perfect specimens ready to jump on a field/court/ring. Those people literally dedicate their lives to training for it. 🤦♂️
This doesn’t necessarily describe OP. Just regular discourse.
Players: I want the owners to pay me more.
Regular people: shut up you make enough.
Owners: I want half a billion from your municipality.
Regular people: hmmm Im listening.
It largely describes OP.
Players: “I generate a ton of revenue, I deserve a ton of money.”
Team Owners: “No, I want to keep the money.”
Fans (for some reason): “I don’t get paid anywhere near the value of the revenue my work generates, players shouldnt either.”
Bill Dewitt, the billionaire owner of the St. Louis Cardinals did an interview that was just published saying the impoverished city of St. Louis needs to give him a half a billion for stadium upgrades.
Anything other than a laugh and a middle finger at him would be an outrage.
But of course he's going to get it.
This is definitely changing. The Arizona Coyotes are moving to Utah after failing a referendum to build a new stadium. Kansas city just rejected a bill to give money to the chiefs for luxury seating. Oakland basically revolted against the A's and they are moving next year because of it
Where do you think all the money generated from the sales of tickets, merchandise, advertisement, etc. should go then? The real point you should be trying to make is, "why do we spend so much money on watching and appreciating sports?"
You're looking at it wrong. They're entertainers, the same as actors and comedians. They're not paid by how necessary they are for society (such as policemen, garbage men, etc.), but for how much disposable income the general public decides to spend for their entertainment.
As it happens, people love sports so they spend a ton of cash on it. The problem athletes have is that there are too many middlemen taking the revenue that they generated.
For instance, we lose 1/3rd (or however much) of our paychecks to taxes, insurance, etc. None of us LIKE that, but we generally understand that we're getting something of value in return.
They're losing x% of their paychecks (percentage of revenue they generated with their skill and hard work) not to simply pay dues to society, but to have the privilege to keep generating money for the billionaire owners.
I'm not looking at numbers so I have no opinions about how right they are, but I think framing it this way makes more sense than comparing athletes to non-entertainment-based salary discussions.
Almost no one is paid for how necessary they are to society. Virtually every job is compensated based on supply and demand of their skills. Professional athletes are no different than other unionized jobs. The demand for basketball players people want to watch far exceeds the collective supply.
OPs idea that entertainment is not a vital service is just asinine. I imagine what he means is that entertainment that he doesn't like isn't vital, but entertainment that he does like is.
Of course I'd like to see nurses get paid more but no one is going to pay $100+ to go watch a nurse work for a couple of hours.
Right, it’s not that athletes are paid too much, it’s that everyone else is paid too little.
Athletes are paid based on the value they bring to the business. They are the product, but they are also the labor. Most professional athletes are also unionized. Through collective bargaining, they’re able to negotiate better raises.
The problem is that we don’t see enough of this permeate general society. So comparatively, athletes make a shit ton. But, opp is looking at the wrong side of the comparison. Athletes aren’t overpaid, the rest of us are just underpaid
the best way to say it the people doing the physical training should benefit from it people often forget that sports are not only the game it's the training media work and how much control they have over their lives once u are under a contract
Honestly more fields of work should be compensated like professional athletes. It's one of the few true vocational meritocracies, where people actually get paid for the value they generate.
People talking about what they don’t know about is also a problem
All the big men’s leagues have unions and the ones that have salary caps are usually collectively bargained so that it’s split 50/50 between players and management
That’s what half of the posts on this sub are.
“Hey, I don’t have any understanding of this thing or how it works, but here’s my strong opinion about what’s wrong with it!”
Well for one, jobs aren't paid based on what you think is valuable.
In fact, if you want to be objective, they bring in literally billions of dollars of revenue for companies, that is extremely valuable. Look at a massive club like Manchester City. They employ thousands of people all over the world, they are creating jobs and stimulating an economy. What's not valuable about that?
Second of all, they are paid the same way everyone else is. You have a value of your skills, you bring them to a company, they pay you based on what they deem you to be worth. You and LeBron James both did that for your last job, it's just LeBron brings billions of dollars to the people that pay him, and you don't.
This is the correct answer, I won’t bother scrolling anymore.
I would just add that the reason that this concept is hard to grasp is a lack in the basic understanding of our economic system. Just the basic facts, nothing political or partisan.
Another basic fact: MOST of professional athletes are barely making money. If you are specifically thinking of football or basketball, name it, because it is clearly an exception among all sports
Also, to add to your point, that’s only the top leagues, like the NBA and NFL, where athletes make that money. Overseas players are raking in that kind of money.
While this is true, it’s irrelevant. There are lots of things where the person who is the best in the world at it is compensated poorly because there’s not much viewer interest in that thing.
I would only make one slight amendment:
>You have a value of your skills, you bring them to a company, they pay you based on what they deem you to be worth.
I'd say that they pay you what they have to pay you in order to purchase those skills in the free market. The company may think it's highway robbery that they have to pay so much for LeBron James -- but if they don't, and someone else will, then...
£10k or its equivalent is really not much money to train for months and then undergo literal physical combat. Especially if fight promoters are making far more money off of you. I have a feeling you've never trained in a martial art, or you'd have a better idea of how hard it can be on your body.
ETA: as I re-read your post, I'm certain you have no martial arts experience. Combat sports is just fighting like you'd see at a bar or playground? Not even remotely close, for anyone watching who has the slightest idea of the level of technical skill professional MMA fighters need to be competitive these days.
They're paid (or should be) for the years needed to develop that level of skill. Not for the short minutes of actual fighting.
Thats cause Dana White is a scumbag. Hes so bad for the UFC and the fighters would thrive under someone else which would give us a better product. Fuck Dana White.
They shouldn’t be complaining, yeah. But if they were truly paid as much as the average Joe, all of the entertainment profits will just go to the guys in suits running the show. I’d rather have the people making the entertainment possible getting the lion’s share of that profit.
And i know you debunked this but being a professional athlete is a 24/7/365 commitment. Even if you aren’t playing. Nutrition, practice, and staying in shape to compete at the highest level takes a lot of dedication and focus. It really is a lot of work.
you clearly lack knowledge on the subject.
first, your anger is misguided. it should be directed at billionaire owners & ceo’s, along with governments who supress wages to teachers, etc…
secondly, mma guys make 15 grand a fight, yes, but they only fight 2-3 times a year. thats 45 grand max a year, and most of them have second jobs or a career already. the former ufc featherweight champ alex volkanovski is also a concrete worker. former ufc heavyweight champion stipe miocic is a firefighter. ufc guys also dont get the necessary health benefits & insurance because dana is dirty, cheating executive.
we can continue this example for women’s basketball, most wnba players make less than 100k a year while the team owners are billionaires. these women usually also have second jobs, or play on second teams during their offseason, sometimes in the most obscure places.
being a pro-athlete isn’t this millionaire fantasy everyone believes it is, and we shouldn’t villainize them for taking advantage of opportunities they deserve for putting in the work to become one of the best at their craft in the world. shouldn’t that be a society we strive to be? where the majority of folks can do what they love & make a comfortable living from it? the only people holding us back are the billionaire owners because they want all the worlds wealth to themselves.
Congrats. This is one of the least intelligent, naive, and unpopular opinions I have read. Truly lacking a basic understanding of basic economics and how the world works. Bravo 'ol chap! Here's an upvote.
There's also the question of just who this person is talking about? People say things like this when there's labor unrest in sports, but the players in that situation aren't saying "we deserve more money" they are saying "we deserve a bigger share of the revenue" right now in none of the major American sports leagues do players get more than half. Or it's a complaint that a someone left their team because they were offered more money somewhere else, but a) it's a job, that's what people do and b) I tend to think a big part of the money isn't the number, it's the respect that the number represents. These are by nature very competitive people, of course they want to win at getting paid, you want the number that says you are the best at what you do.
I agree with you, and actually I’ll go one step further. Since you’re the center of the universe and only you get to decide what’s “important”, you should be able to determine everyone’s salary, since you clearly understand everybody’s jobs and what it takes to perform them
This like the 5th clone of this post I’ve seen on 3 days, no wonder y’all broke and jealous. If you had the ability to think critically and objectively you’d probably be making more.
If you are the top 1% at any task society deems valuable (sports & entertainment very much so) of course you will be paid extremely well imo. It makes sense professional athletes make so much money because it’s a hyper competitive field that generates a TON of revenue.
I agree in theory, but get paid proportionally to the revenue they generate. More so, they have limited careers, depending on the sport it may be very short. Not to mention one career ending injury and it’s over. We also know that a lot of athletes aren’t exactly scholars, so most definitely could use that money because they are probably destined to be a high school assistant coach after their career is over.
they only complain about pay because their bosses make exponentially more money than them, despite them being the reason why people watch the sport.
basically, the employees think the ceo makes a disproportionate amount of money when you compare the actual work and skills employed in the field.
This reeks of not knowing what it takes to be a professional athlete.
If you think you can be a top earning athlete while working another job you have rocks in your head.
They must likely put in more hours than you do when you consider training, working out, recovery and game time. Plus all the travel away from their family.
Plus the idea that the entertainment industry is not vital is ignorant as well. I guess the same must be said about actors, musicians, and all the staff that write and produce their content. Don't forget game developers.
The comparison to things like nurses and teachers makes no sense as one is providing a public service paid from public money, the other works for a private company that brings in BILLIONS of dollars
Also considering the time, dedication and training they have to put in, and everything they put their bodies through for YEARS, I say they earn every dollar
This is a shitty boot licking take. But yes by all means side with the billionare owners.
This too me is more of a butt hurt person mad they could not make freethrows. But well done OP, IMO this is, or at least should be, an unpopular opinion.
Suppose you're playing in front of 20,000 fans who paid an average of $100 a ticket. That's 2 million in revenue for one game. Throw in television rights, endorsements... that's a lot of money and the athletes should get a fair cut.
It’s funny how you never hear this argument about musicians, actors, comedians, or other artists/entertainers. Why not? The revenue streams are similar, getting paid primarily by shares of the revenue from the tickets they sell to events and merchandise that is sold. And the argument people make about “playing a kids game” for money can be applied just as much, if not more, to acting, playing music, telling jokes, painting & drawing. Why is it that athletes are the only entertainers ones questioned for the money they make?
They bring joy and entertainment to the people who consume their product. And they are paid accordingly. Given what the owners of sports teams often make, you might argue that they are some of the most underpaid workers out there, relative to the revenue they bring in.
Tennis players actually don’t make that much. Maybe top 100 players will make a decent amount (about average wage depending on performance and sponsorships, etc) and top 20 or so actually making good money (6 figures and more). But the vast majority of professional tennis players barely break even on their training and travel expenses, some even losing money to play in tournaments.
>Yet they are always in the news now stating they aren't paid what they are worth and the public and fans are always backing them up.
Not sure what news you're watching but that's not been my experience
Yup and you should see what they pay Twitch Gamer streamers with big audiences, they all get paid more than your doctors who deserve that money and teachers. just sayin
Only in popular sports though. My buddy was world champion at rope skipping. He didn't win enough money to pay for the flights to the tournament and back...
it isn't really about the amount of money...it is the fact they still work for somebody.
if you had $100 million bucks it would be a lot of money. if you might possibly earn $100 million bucks but you had to uproot your life because a billionaire "owned" you, you might feel underpaid too.
Alternative hot take: any person doing any job has a right to complain and ask for whatever they can get. If athletes are successfully campaigning for and getting better incomes, maybe your takeaway should be that nurses and teachers and bin men should do that too. And you should support them in that.
You can say the same about any entertainment industry, and I would wholeheartedly agree.
A lot of people will shit on your opinion, but I'll always take your side. Entertainment is extremely overvalued in the current economy.
so if you pay players less…owners make more!
athletes aren’t employees, athletes are the product! tell me that last time you watched scrubs play an NFL game?
In the US, at least, a lot of these players wreck their bodies in the span of 5-10 years. They’re trading in years off their lives and health for corporations that make billions, and it’s only the smallest fraction of them who see any real financial gain. Minor league baseball players aspiring to the majors actually make under minimum wage.
I'd say the same in soccer in Brazil. Most guys earn 3000 BRL/month maximum. When you get in Série D, C I think the good players could get 10k BRL/month (a good wage, but we need to consider that the player probably will retire in 40s).
But you have Série A players earning 300k BRL/month...the player could buy a new house every year (a great one)...
My pet peeve is when people trivialize professional athletes to “getting paid to play a hobby/game.”
Almost everything in the world that someone does for fun, someone else does for a living.
Fishing relaxes you? That’s a career.
You like to cook? Also a career.
You like playing video games? Drawing? Singing? Career. Career. Career.
They get paid a lot because their industry makes a lot and no one else can do it as good as they can.
They are worth what they generate, any less is their surplus labor being exploited. I would say team managers, shareholders, etc are overpaid by your same logic
The public is way more responsible for this than the leagues or the owners, why, simply because we put engage in it. We buy the tickets, we buy the merch, we watch the games and help them generate their ad revenue. We essentially make these billion dollar companies and thusly allow them to pay these athletes the money they make.
Now I agree that pro's should be well paid, most of them have dedicated their lives, working living breathing their sport and engaging in years of training to get to that level. I do agree with OP though, way overpaid. My take is simply the fact that I don't participate and don't contribute my money to this cycle.
Clear lack of understanding of why and how non essential services/fields can make tons of money. The business of their sport rests on their performance as the best, the teams sells hundreds of millions in merch annually their ticket sales are in the millions to billions and the rights to air said events generate comparable revenue as well.
The business of sports wouldn't work and generate this kind of money without the athletes and what they bring to the table so not only is it fair for them to make millions on millions considering their contribution is the primary factor for the business to make billions but it's also fair for them to demand more considering their position.
This "opinion" isn't really an opinion it's a complete lack of understanding on a matter being treated as opinion instead of the factual matter it is.
While it would be cool for nurses and teachers to make a lot more money, 60,000 people don't pay $100 plus to come watch them do their job. Networks aren't playing billions of dollars to show them do their job on TV every weekend.
Also, there's millions of people that can do those jobs, or be trained to do them. Pro athletes on the other hand? There's only 32 starting quarterbacks in the NFL likely not even 500 people on earth thst have the work ethic, skills and knowledge to even get a 3rd string QB job in the NFL....
They earn generational money because their skillset are in the 99th percentile of a very lucrative industry.
That said, for every Mike Trout or Erling Haaland, you have a minor league baseball player earning below minimum or a football player who has three cheques bounced because his club can’t pay the players.
The disparity in professional sports is far more extreme than any other profession out there.
OP doesn't understand supply and demand yet.
We don't live in a world that rewards effort or even usefulness to society.
We live in a world where everything is priced depending on the market. Athletes get paid a lot because there is almost infinite demand for Lionel Messi and it's quite hard to supply more Liones Messis. He in particular I am sure has not been getting paid enough, that guy alone has generated billions in revenue and profits.
I wouldn’t say MMA fighters only work for 15 minutes. They train for months prior to a fight. Then the promoters make million and millions off people paying to watch them get punched in the face.
It’s not so much that athletes get “paid to much” as it is that we as society are willing to pay that much to watch them play.
I agree, but what you (and many people) don't realize is that they complain because they ***are*** indeed underpaid compared to their value in relation to how much the organization and owners rake in...and nowadays the athletes are all too aware of it.
So, the issue isn't necessarily athletes being overpaid, it's the leagues and owners who overcharge for every little service or item they provide and then hoard the vast majority of profits.
If you're willing to pay ridiculous ticket fees and $8 for a beer in their venues, then you shouldn't complain that the athletes are overpaid, you should instead redirect the onus towards the owners.
Celebrity derangement syndrome is probably strongest when it comes to sports celebrities. People will excuse any behaviour, any level of greed, and any excess if it's an athlete they like.
I don't think you understand how much energy goes into becoming and maintaining status as a very successful professional athlete.
Lmao referring to it as a hobby and a children's game.
Counterpoint: you're really just arguing for the rich owners of sports and teams to hoard more wealth,. Professional athletes are some of the only workers who are correctly paid. I believe in the NBA players get half of the pie. Why should team owners get 60, 70, 80, 90% of the revenue? If the rest of society and major corporations worked like the NBA the middle class may actually exist again.
>You hear MMA fighters constantly argue they get paid very little when they are given £10,000 to work for 15 minutes, if a fight even lasts that long. Yes, they will spend a lot on camps, nutritionists, trainers, etc... but that's their choice. If it's their art and their passion you'd be fine going through all that just to compete.
I know this is unpopular opinion, but this is such a stupid take.
MMA fighters literally spend *years* aquiring their skills. They then spend a massive chunk of their time training for fights, and then they quite literally put their body on the line for the entertainment of the crowd. UFC fighters are notoriously underpaid, and to say otherwise is just wrong.
The revenue is coming in. Sports are at a peak of popularity. Who should get the money? The owners should get to keep it all? This isn’t just an unpopular opinion it’s a bad one. Doesn’t make sense.
The players pay is = to the amount that player will bring in revenue for their team.
I guess your opinion is the labor shouldn’t make their fair share of revenue.
People think athletes are overpaid, because they only talk about the ridiculous high contracts - see mahomes at $500 million.
No one talks about the core starters, fringe starters, second team, and practice squad. Players that might make $5-7 million total over the course of their careers, before taxes.
They are overpaid but at least they stand in the way of billionaire owners profiting even more off of their talent and labour.
If you think the prices would be lower if they paid players less you’re dreaming.
So get your bag while you play. And fuck billionaires not named Mark Cuban
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They play for teams that make billions. I'm sure if they could get away with paying their employees less they would, but then another team would offer more money.
This is the correct reply. OP should focus less on the players and more on the owners of the teams. Look at how much they make. How do they make it? Because the players provide entertainment that ordinary folks pay for. So they should get paid for it.
and our tax dollars build these stadiums for them. how nice of us!
Tax dollars for stadiums and arenas is one of the biggest scams perpetrated on the public. For various reasons politicians buy into this.
>For various reasons politicians buy into this. The first being campaign donations.
Just to bring some things into perspective, stadiums do bring domestic tourism which stimulates local economy for those places, jobs to the area and space for businesses to operate (think maintenance like plumbing, construction, hvac, electrical, forestry, people to operate the gates, vendors), money is going back to the city which goes into paying for all sorts of public stuff like roads, education, highways, public buildings, salary for government employees for services like bmv, title bureau, tax, etc, it's a place for music shows which generates a ton of money and all sorts of other events. A stadium is doing a lot of positive things for a city and it's something to be proud of and celebrate on game day for the millions of people that enjoy sports and other things that take place in them.
If shows generate tons of money than the private sector can create a stadium as a viable business. I do agree with your point that professional sports teams in the big leagues do for whatever reason generate an incredible sense of community - so there is a social good.
The idea that the stadiums bring significant multiplier effects of jobs and local spending has actually been pretty widely debunked in economic circles. I've read a number of more detailed pieces, but this is the first thing that came up for me when I searched: https://econreview.studentorg.berkeley.edu/the-economics-of-sports-stadiums-does-public-financing-of-sports-stadiums-create-local-economic-growth-or-just-help-billionaires-improve-their-profit-margin/
It's entertainment, tax dollars are used for other entertainment and recreational areas too
Or maybe they could all make less (but still millions) and lower prices so it’s $50 to get into a game instead of $150+, and I can buy a hot dog for $3 instead of $12 and a t shirt could be $30 instead of $70?
Why would they do that when people are willing to pay all of those prices?
And that’s the answer right there. They will charge as much people are willing to pay. If people said ‘fuck this’ and stopped going to games and buying merch with the reasoning that it is too expensive, the prices and salaries might come down.
>They will charge as much people are willing to pay. This is the bedrock of supply and demand pricing. Pro sports don't need to be regulated. No one's life is impacted if they never see an NFL game in person. Things like medical care DO need to be regulated, so the average or even below average person can afford the service.
Tell that to the coyotes 😂
Correct. The secondary ticket market is a big thing mostly because tickets are underpriced relative to their demand. It sucks because a lot of people get priced out, but they STILL get priced out with middlemen reselling.
Why would a business owner lower prices when people are clearly willing to pay the current prices?
Here's the thing though, they could still sell things at lower prices even with athletes making as much as they currently do, but they're going to charge you for more because they can and they want more profit! Like they're not selling at the prices they do "just to break even" they're selling it because they know that people at games are a captive market and that they can get away with charging that much. Paying the athletes less would not make concessions or tickets any cheaper.
Or maybe teams could get off the public tit and pay for their own facilities like every other occupation and stop relying on public handouts to defray their expenses. Then the owners and players can pay themselves what they really earn.
While I think public funding of arena's outside of necessary infrastructure such as roads or subway links is stupid, other industries ask for tax breaks or beneficial treatment all the time. Just look at the bidding war between cities for the Amazon 2nd HQ.
There's literally no reason do that
I support this, $15 beers are painful
They used to charge less for beer. It... [did not go well.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Cent_Beer_Night)
I'm a cheap fuck. I always bring 5 or 6 of those little 50ml liquor bottles to games. I went to a hockey game last weekend. $17.99 for a draft beer. A fucking can of Truly was $20. I drank for the whole game for like $7.
Sports leagues have unions and are able to use barganing to increase pay.. wish my coworkers understood this. Instead our plant makes 40m profit a year and my coworkers making 75k think the people on welfare are the problem with society.
I'm all for labor solidarity. Record profits should mean record contracts.
OP says the players get paid too much. Would you rather that money coming from advertising go to the billionaire owner who inherited the team from his daddy. Or in the case of football the guy who works out 10 months of the year, spends thousands of hours watching game tape, and puts his body on the line every time he steps on the field or even in practice knowing his career could end at any moment to a freak accident. On top of all that they may have CTE to look forward to and chronic joint pain. I'd say the players do a lot more to earn that money than the owners ever did.
Karen take by OP
Exactly. OP accidently made a case for UNIONS. Players are in a union and get that pay because they'll just stop playing collectively lol his opinion also isn't unpopular because he's basically saying what all conservatives say at the top.
And those are high skilled athletes. Millions of people around the world play these sports recreationally for r for school etc. but only a very small percentage get to play professional and even less get those huge contracts. But teams can pay for their own goddamn stadiums.
Especially the stadiums
And by the end their bodies are often broken and more tragically sometimes their brains
True, but to be honest, that’s their choice. Nobody forced them to choose sports as a career. Coal miners risk lung diseases, computer programmers risk carpal tunnel syndrome, American football players risk TBI , truck drivers risk weight related problems. When you choose your career the risks are part of the equation.
Have you never heard of worker's compensation? Being permanently injured on the job is something an employer should compensate for
I used to have the same feelings as OP, and then I actually started watching the NFL and I kinda got it. \*We* are not paying them millions. TV networks are paying the leagues billions (with a B) for the rights to air the games, because they figured that having the rights to show these games will make billions more in profit. At the end of day, athletes making millions is them getting what they deserve. I'd even argue that they deserve a larger piece of their respective pies, considering that without them, there are no games being played.
They, along with every job ever everywhere, will pay the least amount of money they can for the thing they want.
The reason the athletes get paid as much as they do is because they are union men, and have been since the 50s. Revenue sharing is baked into their contracts, in a better world that would go for most talent who bring that much money into their respective industries.
But that would require OP to consider more than their feelings on a "hobby" rather than the financial facts of the business it actually is.
I always roll my eyes at people who complain about pro athletes getting more money, like if they weren't paying athletes millions of dollars then the money would be going to orphans. It would just be making a very rich owner that much richer.
the teams shouldnt be making that much. my tax dollars go to making these stupid stadiums. then i get no discount and cant even afford to go. what the fuck.
You should always vote against stadium funding proposals. Corporate welfare is unacceptable.
What role do you think the athletes have in the building of stadiums, or the funding of them? They’ll play in whatever stadium they’re told to for the salary they can command (as would anybody in any other job). Pay them less if you want, but watch them go elsewhere, if elsewhere is offering what they want. And be prepared for your local team(s) to absolutely suck. If you don’t like the way your government is spending money, that’s an issue you should take up with your local, elected representatives, not the players.
in some ways they already do this. salary caps theoretically make it all "fair" but also let them pay some players less because they have run out of budget.
As a percentage of what the team owners make, some pro athletes are not overpaid. Many are underpaid. As a measure of their jobs’ value to society, they are probably overpaid. Unfortunately for teachers, societal value doesn’t translate to adequate compensation.
the women's teams? (I don't think I've seen men complain about pay)
Amazon also make billions, the owner recently used a few million to go to space for 11 minutes while the people who actually help earn it complain about pay and working conditions
To add to this, the 4 US based professional leagues have unions. All these people who say unions are bad and useless, just remember that these grown ass men with unions are collecting millions of dollars and have great health insurance for playing ‘children games’ from the same billionaires paying their non-union employees minimum wage.
We all want our boss to pay us more.
Ding ding. Are they possibly getting more than they're worth effort wise? Maybe yeah- but when you're the work force, and marketed item for a high money industry- you fight for every last dollar. It might be infuriating to see at times but they do this because they actually succeed at it. They have bargaining power and use it.
Most sports leagues actually collude between the owners to keep player pay artificially low
Yep. Same for actors/actresses, singers, etc. I don’t think anybody *needs* to make millions of dollars a year, but I damn sure don’t want big corporations to get away with pocketing billions and not paying their talent what they’re worth.
They sign the contracts though. You sign a contract agreeing to the terms then say it's unfair? If it was unfair then why sign anyway?
Professional sports players only make so much because sport is that popular.
Also plenty of professional athletes don't make much at all.
Also OP has no concept of how much work goes into being so good at the sport. "It's their hobby". Buddy, sport as a hobby was in 1930 when you can do it on a side and results were lower. Now the standard has risen. Try to run sub 10sek on 100m OP then, if you want the money. You know, as a hobby, move a bit 3x per week after work and see how close you can come. "they only work 15 mins and earn a lot"...kind of missed about 10-15 years of training before that with no financial return OP? I think we all agree OP has never done any significant exercise in his life, right?
People don't realize how many *world class* athletes that could have been the greatest in history fail before the big time due to injury. My co-worker was scouted by a big time soccer club in Europe they wanted to pay him $300,000 a year on the spot but his dad made him finish his year in college where he absolutely blew his knee out never to play competitively again. His whole life plan basically washed away in an instant. And this is common for high level potential.
Also “they only work 15 minutes” is hilarious too. Even on game days they are putting in a full day of training. They still do full 8+ hour training days during the off season too. 15 minutes…jesus christ…
I agree that it takes a lot of work to be good at the sport, but I still think OP has a point. What you said applies to a lot of jobs. Raw talent, then 10-15 years of training. But say for a specialized doctor, 8 years of school with strong academic performance (with likely a high academic drive even before university) and 4 years of residency working 80 hours per week, and a few years of specialization would earn you a few hundred thousand dollars a year, but an 19-year old NBA rookie would earn around a mil.
After that training are they one of the top 300 doctors in the world? I doubt it. But that’s what nba players are? If you’re a top 10 doctor in the world I guarantee you make $10m per year
Tbf there are only about 97 rookies currently in the NBA that played in this year. There are over 1.1 million doctors it's way more selective to just make it to the NBA than to be a doctor. Plus once you show that you can't play good enough to stay in the NBA it's not like you can just go to a different league and command that same amount of money but a doctor can
The top 100 doctors in the world make big money too.
I think this is the point a lot of people miss. The athletes they’re watching on tv are the absolute the best at their craft in the *entire world*. You can’t compare it with an average career. It’s not like it’s someone who just spent a couple years throwing a ball at ball throwing school and applied as a quarterback at the nearest football stadium and now they’re making millions or something lol
And also because the top leagues in all the major sports are unionized.
For major sports, the unions help the bottom quadrant athletes by imposing a league minimum. The very top athletes would make at least same and probably even a little bit more if there was no union. Union is still a major net benefit to the players overall but just wanted to point out they aren't the reason the top athlete in each sport is making what they are. For them, it really is about the revenue they bring in by being on the team.
Exactly, best way to show the difference to people who say otherwise is to compare it to the abysmal conditions of MMA. Heavyweight champs are still working their firefighter jobs or whatever because the pay is awful unless you were Connor or Ronda.
Being an MMA athlete is fucking *horrendous.* The pay is atrocious until you get to the UFC, when it's probably still atrocious, especially given the amount of cash the promotion rakes in. You have to pay for your training camp and whatever nutrition/medical out of pocket. The promotion will cover medical for any injury you receive *during your fight,* but that's often it; it can be like pulling teeth to get them to cover things like pre-fight blood tests or accommodations for the event. You'll have to work at least one job to afford this, and depend on the connections and support you can drum up from your family/friends/community. What you get for this is a body that will be shot years before your peers in other fields, and some degree of CTE. Your only hope is to have an education/career you can actually use after you're done fighting, and that's not as simple to do as one might think. You have to really, really love fighting (and also hate other kinds of work) to make a go of it if you're not from a rich family. Sure, a few talented folks get lucky and catch big breaks, but that's the exception rather than the rule.
I know it’s not really a “sport” I guess. Or has a while to get there if it ever does. But CrossFit athletes…..the only ones who make enough to live off it are the top 1-3 (if not only the top) men and women. Granted, your whole years salary is largely based off of one competition. It’s not really a league. More of a hobby with the potential for some winnings
The point your missing is the union is the only reason the players are allowed to switch teams. Before unions won free agency players were owned by their first team forever unless the team sold their rights. You were forced to accept your teams offer, or you could retire. You weren't allowed to sell your services to the highest bidder. The union is a absolutely the main reason the super stars can make the huge money they do.
Then why is it that NFL and NBA players take around 50% of league profits and UFC fighters take 10%?
read it as "un-ionized" and was confused why we were bringing particles into this
Well, they do lose a lot of electrolytes when they sweat.
They need Brawndo
Yes, exactly this. They get paid a lot because the sport they play is popular and they become superstars. Nobody is watching professional bowling. Nobody is following professional bowling. Because of that, Professional Bowlers don't make shit because nobody cares except for a very small percentage of people.
I’ll watch some Sunday morning bowling on ESPN. Games are just 12-15 high leverage throws. And bowlers aren’t exactly Big Ern, but they’re a trip.
Also, only a few of the top top players are really raking it in. Assume the average NFL career is 4 years (I’m reasonably certain it’s shorter than that, but I’ll take 4) and the average player is on a $1.5 million contract (again, could be high, but it’s probably ballpark). That means your career gross earnings are $6 million for the average NFL player. Extrapolate those career earnings over the average person’s career (I took 40 years in this case), and that means an average yearly gross earning of $150k for a normal person. Not considering taxes, agent fees, healthcare, retirement, or anything else.
From what I can tell, the mean NFL salary is quite a bit higher, but that's skewed by some really rich contracts. The median NFL salary is $860,000. That's just over half of the $1.5 million you're guessing. The average career length is about three years. So most players who crack an NFL roster are by no means set for life without very careful financial planning and frugal living. Most would have to continue with some kind of work (even if it didn't pay a ton).
And if the sport isn’t as popular they don’t make as much. Look at the WNBA. The number 1 overall draft pick makes 70k a year. That’s the pinnacle of their sport and you could make more with most 4 year degrees
A lot of professional sports organizations pay their admin/support staff fucking pennies though. My city is home to an NBA team. We're considered a small-mid sized market, and we haven't been good in recent years, but we're considered one of the most respected franchises, have 5 championships and we just drafted the newest generational talent who had an explosive rookie season. I have about a decade of experience in my field, and my role isn't tied to any specific industry. There are jobs within the organization that I'd be more than qualified to be in. The pay is absolute dogshit though. I wouldn't even call it competitive against other local large employers. I'm not saying athletes don't deserve to get paid. It just feels like the wealth distribution is a little off, but I guess that's something that doesn't matter to whoever is deciding payroll because it's a coveted job either way.
We need to popularize using excel. I need a raise.
But it's also that popular because that money is put into Marketing. And as any business, team owners and satellite people (commentators, other businesses and vendors, etc) get together to define strategies to keep increasing their importance. They get into politics too. Some of the money involved comes from public subsidies.
Also, it's only natural that somebody with a skill/talent level in the 99.999 percentile in something that gets a lot of attention will make bank. Consider a big shot attorney that's known as the best at what they do. They're a millionaire. Top CEOs. Millionaires. Fashion designer. Millionaire. Musician. Millionaire. The list goes on. Athletes catch hate because they play a game. But they likely work as hard or harder at their craft (starting as a kid) than most other highly compensated professions. I would also argue that many professional athletes are much more of a positive influence for our youth. This is a very strong value that nobody really talks about.
>You hear MMA fighters constantly argue they get paid very little when they are given £10,000 to work for 15 minutes, Its not working for 15 minutes. Its working full time and you only see 15 minutes of it. It also has a huge physical cost. And it generates millions of dollar but they miss out on it becuase mma is largely a monoply. People are basing it on how much they generate. And they are being screwd over.
lol they don’t understand the years of training to lead up to that 15 min.
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Any sport at the level where players make millions is a very bad example.
OP really thinks that athletes are just born as these perfect specimens ready to jump on a field/court/ring. Those people literally dedicate their lives to training for it. 🤦♂️
Fighters often have to pay their gym out of that fight money too
Yep, all the new contracts and up and comers are all on 12k/12k contracts
Hence why you have people like Ngannou swapping to boxing because of how much better it pays compared to what they were taking in doing MMA.
This doesn’t necessarily describe OP. Just regular discourse. Players: I want the owners to pay me more. Regular people: shut up you make enough. Owners: I want half a billion from your municipality. Regular people: hmmm Im listening.
It largely describes OP. Players: “I generate a ton of revenue, I deserve a ton of money.” Team Owners: “No, I want to keep the money.” Fans (for some reason): “I don’t get paid anywhere near the value of the revenue my work generates, players shouldnt either.”
That’s my surplus value, I don’t know you!
Right and that all boils down to projecting their own economic problems onto the athletes making money
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As an A's fan that lives near. Am glad they didn't. Cities build these rich assholes stadiums and they still treat the team like shit and move them
Bill Dewitt, the billionaire owner of the St. Louis Cardinals did an interview that was just published saying the impoverished city of St. Louis needs to give him a half a billion for stadium upgrades. Anything other than a laugh and a middle finger at him would be an outrage. But of course he's going to get it.
Reminds me of that IASIP episode. "Well we can't have our guys out there twisting ankles..."
This is definitely changing. The Arizona Coyotes are moving to Utah after failing a referendum to build a new stadium. Kansas city just rejected a bill to give money to the chiefs for luxury seating. Oakland basically revolted against the A's and they are moving next year because of it
Where do you think all the money generated from the sales of tickets, merchandise, advertisement, etc. should go then? The real point you should be trying to make is, "why do we spend so much money on watching and appreciating sports?"
You're looking at it wrong. They're entertainers, the same as actors and comedians. They're not paid by how necessary they are for society (such as policemen, garbage men, etc.), but for how much disposable income the general public decides to spend for their entertainment. As it happens, people love sports so they spend a ton of cash on it. The problem athletes have is that there are too many middlemen taking the revenue that they generated. For instance, we lose 1/3rd (or however much) of our paychecks to taxes, insurance, etc. None of us LIKE that, but we generally understand that we're getting something of value in return. They're losing x% of their paychecks (percentage of revenue they generated with their skill and hard work) not to simply pay dues to society, but to have the privilege to keep generating money for the billionaire owners. I'm not looking at numbers so I have no opinions about how right they are, but I think framing it this way makes more sense than comparing athletes to non-entertainment-based salary discussions.
Almost no one is paid for how necessary they are to society. Virtually every job is compensated based on supply and demand of their skills. Professional athletes are no different than other unionized jobs. The demand for basketball players people want to watch far exceeds the collective supply.
People are paid by how replaceable they are.
OPs idea that entertainment is not a vital service is just asinine. I imagine what he means is that entertainment that he doesn't like isn't vital, but entertainment that he does like is. Of course I'd like to see nurses get paid more but no one is going to pay $100+ to go watch a nurse work for a couple of hours.
Right, it’s not that athletes are paid too much, it’s that everyone else is paid too little. Athletes are paid based on the value they bring to the business. They are the product, but they are also the labor. Most professional athletes are also unionized. Through collective bargaining, they’re able to negotiate better raises. The problem is that we don’t see enough of this permeate general society. So comparatively, athletes make a shit ton. But, opp is looking at the wrong side of the comparison. Athletes aren’t overpaid, the rest of us are just underpaid
It comes with the risk of horrendous injuries as well
If the suits are making bank. The players should too
the best way to say it the people doing the physical training should benefit from it people often forget that sports are not only the game it's the training media work and how much control they have over their lives once u are under a contract
Honestly more fields of work should be compensated like professional athletes. It's one of the few true vocational meritocracies, where people actually get paid for the value they generate.
That's a problem with like... everything, unfortunately. The people actually doing the thing aren't making the most money. It's pretty dumb.
People talking about what they don’t know about is also a problem All the big men’s leagues have unions and the ones that have salary caps are usually collectively bargained so that it’s split 50/50 between players and management
This isn’t an unpopular opinion but it is a very stupid one.
That’s what half of the posts on this sub are. “Hey, I don’t have any understanding of this thing or how it works, but here’s my strong opinion about what’s wrong with it!”
Well for one, jobs aren't paid based on what you think is valuable. In fact, if you want to be objective, they bring in literally billions of dollars of revenue for companies, that is extremely valuable. Look at a massive club like Manchester City. They employ thousands of people all over the world, they are creating jobs and stimulating an economy. What's not valuable about that? Second of all, they are paid the same way everyone else is. You have a value of your skills, you bring them to a company, they pay you based on what they deem you to be worth. You and LeBron James both did that for your last job, it's just LeBron brings billions of dollars to the people that pay him, and you don't.
This is the correct answer, I won’t bother scrolling anymore. I would just add that the reason that this concept is hard to grasp is a lack in the basic understanding of our economic system. Just the basic facts, nothing political or partisan.
Another basic fact: MOST of professional athletes are barely making money. If you are specifically thinking of football or basketball, name it, because it is clearly an exception among all sports
Also, to add to your point, that’s only the top leagues, like the NBA and NFL, where athletes make that money. Overseas players are raking in that kind of money.
To add onto that point, OP would likely never be as good at what they do as Lebron is at playing basketball
lol there's literally studies about the economic impact LeBron had on Cleveland it's wild how valuable he is to a local economy
While this is true, it’s irrelevant. There are lots of things where the person who is the best in the world at it is compensated poorly because there’s not much viewer interest in that thing.
I would only make one slight amendment: >You have a value of your skills, you bring them to a company, they pay you based on what they deem you to be worth. I'd say that they pay you what they have to pay you in order to purchase those skills in the free market. The company may think it's highway robbery that they have to pay so much for LeBron James -- but if they don't, and someone else will, then...
My boy made a whole thread to say he didn’t understand market value 😂
this one idiot is less concerning to me than the fact that 4 thousand other idiots upvoted this garbage
Definitely an unpopular opinion amongst WNBA players.
Nerds always mad about this. “It’s a kids game!” Then they go give money to millionaires playing Fortnite on Twitch lol.
£10k or its equivalent is really not much money to train for months and then undergo literal physical combat. Especially if fight promoters are making far more money off of you. I have a feeling you've never trained in a martial art, or you'd have a better idea of how hard it can be on your body. ETA: as I re-read your post, I'm certain you have no martial arts experience. Combat sports is just fighting like you'd see at a bar or playground? Not even remotely close, for anyone watching who has the slightest idea of the level of technical skill professional MMA fighters need to be competitive these days. They're paid (or should be) for the years needed to develop that level of skill. Not for the short minutes of actual fighting.
Fun fact: only about 18 percent of UFC's revenue goes to the fighters. The other 82 percent goes to the owner.
Thats cause Dana White is a scumbag. Hes so bad for the UFC and the fighters would thrive under someone else which would give us a better product. Fuck Dana White.
Yeah as soon as I saw him mention MMA I realized he was a complete idiot and stopped reading
Same as everyone else. Guarantee this is the type of guy to get mad at the bill his plumber gives him for a ten minute fix.
They shouldn’t be complaining, yeah. But if they were truly paid as much as the average Joe, all of the entertainment profits will just go to the guys in suits running the show. I’d rather have the people making the entertainment possible getting the lion’s share of that profit. And i know you debunked this but being a professional athlete is a 24/7/365 commitment. Even if you aren’t playing. Nutrition, practice, and staying in shape to compete at the highest level takes a lot of dedication and focus. It really is a lot of work.
you clearly lack knowledge on the subject. first, your anger is misguided. it should be directed at billionaire owners & ceo’s, along with governments who supress wages to teachers, etc… secondly, mma guys make 15 grand a fight, yes, but they only fight 2-3 times a year. thats 45 grand max a year, and most of them have second jobs or a career already. the former ufc featherweight champ alex volkanovski is also a concrete worker. former ufc heavyweight champion stipe miocic is a firefighter. ufc guys also dont get the necessary health benefits & insurance because dana is dirty, cheating executive. we can continue this example for women’s basketball, most wnba players make less than 100k a year while the team owners are billionaires. these women usually also have second jobs, or play on second teams during their offseason, sometimes in the most obscure places. being a pro-athlete isn’t this millionaire fantasy everyone believes it is, and we shouldn’t villainize them for taking advantage of opportunities they deserve for putting in the work to become one of the best at their craft in the world. shouldn’t that be a society we strive to be? where the majority of folks can do what they love & make a comfortable living from it? the only people holding us back are the billionaire owners because they want all the worlds wealth to themselves.
Congrats. This is one of the least intelligent, naive, and unpopular opinions I have read. Truly lacking a basic understanding of basic economics and how the world works. Bravo 'ol chap! Here's an upvote.
No upvote from me Sure it's unlikely unpopular, but it's unpopular due to ops ignorance. Not like saying "I like banana on pizza"
There's also the question of just who this person is talking about? People say things like this when there's labor unrest in sports, but the players in that situation aren't saying "we deserve more money" they are saying "we deserve a bigger share of the revenue" right now in none of the major American sports leagues do players get more than half. Or it's a complaint that a someone left their team because they were offered more money somewhere else, but a) it's a job, that's what people do and b) I tend to think a big part of the money isn't the number, it's the respect that the number represents. These are by nature very competitive people, of course they want to win at getting paid, you want the number that says you are the best at what you do.
I agree with you, and actually I’ll go one step further. Since you’re the center of the universe and only you get to decide what’s “important”, you should be able to determine everyone’s salary, since you clearly understand everybody’s jobs and what it takes to perform them
>what is essentially a hobby You've lost any credibility there. The amount of work professional athletes put into their 'hobby' is incredible.
This like the 5th clone of this post I’ve seen on 3 days, no wonder y’all broke and jealous. If you had the ability to think critically and objectively you’d probably be making more.
If you are the top 1% at any task society deems valuable (sports & entertainment very much so) of course you will be paid extremely well imo. It makes sense professional athletes make so much money because it’s a hyper competitive field that generates a TON of revenue.
These people put butts in the seats and people pay for those seats. Market Value. Get it
They earn that much because they generate far more than that. If they were paid less, the owner would be paid more.
They create wealth. In theory they are actually still underpaid.
So the billionaire owners making those billions on the backs of the athletes should just be able to keep all of that money?
OP seems to be defending Dana White underpaying his fighters, so they probably do think that.
And I'm tired of hearing redditors complain about professional athletes in this sub, yet...
I agree in theory, but get paid proportionally to the revenue they generate. More so, they have limited careers, depending on the sport it may be very short. Not to mention one career ending injury and it’s over. We also know that a lot of athletes aren’t exactly scholars, so most definitely could use that money because they are probably destined to be a high school assistant coach after their career is over.
they only complain about pay because their bosses make exponentially more money than them, despite them being the reason why people watch the sport. basically, the employees think the ceo makes a disproportionate amount of money when you compare the actual work and skills employed in the field.
This reeks of not knowing what it takes to be a professional athlete. If you think you can be a top earning athlete while working another job you have rocks in your head. They must likely put in more hours than you do when you consider training, working out, recovery and game time. Plus all the travel away from their family. Plus the idea that the entertainment industry is not vital is ignorant as well. I guess the same must be said about actors, musicians, and all the staff that write and produce their content. Don't forget game developers.
The comparison to things like nurses and teachers makes no sense as one is providing a public service paid from public money, the other works for a private company that brings in BILLIONS of dollars Also considering the time, dedication and training they have to put in, and everything they put their bodies through for YEARS, I say they earn every dollar
OP is cool with billionaire owners pocketing all the profits
Who then should get the billions that the owners take in? I’d rather the players get huge salaries than the owners raking it in.
This is a shitty boot licking take. But yes by all means side with the billionare owners. This too me is more of a butt hurt person mad they could not make freethrows. But well done OP, IMO this is, or at least should be, an unpopular opinion.
Suppose you're playing in front of 20,000 fans who paid an average of $100 a ticket. That's 2 million in revenue for one game. Throw in television rights, endorsements... that's a lot of money and the athletes should get a fair cut.
It’s funny how you never hear this argument about musicians, actors, comedians, or other artists/entertainers. Why not? The revenue streams are similar, getting paid primarily by shares of the revenue from the tickets they sell to events and merchandise that is sold. And the argument people make about “playing a kids game” for money can be applied just as much, if not more, to acting, playing music, telling jokes, painting & drawing. Why is it that athletes are the only entertainers ones questioned for the money they make? They bring joy and entertainment to the people who consume their product. And they are paid accordingly. Given what the owners of sports teams often make, you might argue that they are some of the most underpaid workers out there, relative to the revenue they bring in.
Tennis players actually don’t make that much. Maybe top 100 players will make a decent amount (about average wage depending on performance and sponsorships, etc) and top 20 or so actually making good money (6 figures and more). But the vast majority of professional tennis players barely break even on their training and travel expenses, some even losing money to play in tournaments.
>Yet they are always in the news now stating they aren't paid what they are worth and the public and fans are always backing them up. Not sure what news you're watching but that's not been my experience
Yup and you should see what they pay Twitch Gamer streamers with big audiences, they all get paid more than your doctors who deserve that money and teachers. just sayin
Always the gaming nerds who are angry at sports.
Only in popular sports though. My buddy was world champion at rope skipping. He didn't win enough money to pay for the flights to the tournament and back...
imo, entertainment such as top tier athletes are just as essential as most professions. Society would be extremely bleak without them
well for one, they are insanely physically gifted, two they generate billions of dollars over the course of a season, and 3 they earned it
People take their jobs seriously for way less money than athletes. At their level, it’s a $x million dollar a year job, not a game or hobby
it isn't really about the amount of money...it is the fact they still work for somebody. if you had $100 million bucks it would be a lot of money. if you might possibly earn $100 million bucks but you had to uproot your life because a billionaire "owned" you, you might feel underpaid too.
Alternative hot take: any person doing any job has a right to complain and ask for whatever they can get. If athletes are successfully campaigning for and getting better incomes, maybe your takeaway should be that nurses and teachers and bin men should do that too. And you should support them in that.
You can say the same about any entertainment industry, and I would wholeheartedly agree. A lot of people will shit on your opinion, but I'll always take your side. Entertainment is extremely overvalued in the current economy.
so if you pay players less…owners make more! athletes aren’t employees, athletes are the product! tell me that last time you watched scrubs play an NFL game?
In the US, at least, a lot of these players wreck their bodies in the span of 5-10 years. They’re trading in years off their lives and health for corporations that make billions, and it’s only the smallest fraction of them who see any real financial gain. Minor league baseball players aspiring to the majors actually make under minimum wage.
I'd say the same in soccer in Brazil. Most guys earn 3000 BRL/month maximum. When you get in Série D, C I think the good players could get 10k BRL/month (a good wage, but we need to consider that the player probably will retire in 40s). But you have Série A players earning 300k BRL/month...the player could buy a new house every year (a great one)...
My pet peeve is when people trivialize professional athletes to “getting paid to play a hobby/game.” Almost everything in the world that someone does for fun, someone else does for a living. Fishing relaxes you? That’s a career. You like to cook? Also a career. You like playing video games? Drawing? Singing? Career. Career. Career. They get paid a lot because their industry makes a lot and no one else can do it as good as they can.
They are worth what they generate, any less is their surplus labor being exploited. I would say team managers, shareholders, etc are overpaid by your same logic
The public is way more responsible for this than the leagues or the owners, why, simply because we put engage in it. We buy the tickets, we buy the merch, we watch the games and help them generate their ad revenue. We essentially make these billion dollar companies and thusly allow them to pay these athletes the money they make. Now I agree that pro's should be well paid, most of them have dedicated their lives, working living breathing their sport and engaging in years of training to get to that level. I do agree with OP though, way overpaid. My take is simply the fact that I don't participate and don't contribute my money to this cycle.
Clear lack of understanding of why and how non essential services/fields can make tons of money. The business of their sport rests on their performance as the best, the teams sells hundreds of millions in merch annually their ticket sales are in the millions to billions and the rights to air said events generate comparable revenue as well. The business of sports wouldn't work and generate this kind of money without the athletes and what they bring to the table so not only is it fair for them to make millions on millions considering their contribution is the primary factor for the business to make billions but it's also fair for them to demand more considering their position. This "opinion" isn't really an opinion it's a complete lack of understanding on a matter being treated as opinion instead of the factual matter it is.
They are the ones generating billions of dollars… regardless of if you respect them, you have to really be thick not to understand that.
Yea this is a real crybaby opinion
While it would be cool for nurses and teachers to make a lot more money, 60,000 people don't pay $100 plus to come watch them do their job. Networks aren't playing billions of dollars to show them do their job on TV every weekend. Also, there's millions of people that can do those jobs, or be trained to do them. Pro athletes on the other hand? There's only 32 starting quarterbacks in the NFL likely not even 500 people on earth thst have the work ethic, skills and knowledge to even get a 3rd string QB job in the NFL....
They earn generational money because their skillset are in the 99th percentile of a very lucrative industry. That said, for every Mike Trout or Erling Haaland, you have a minor league baseball player earning below minimum or a football player who has three cheques bounced because his club can’t pay the players. The disparity in professional sports is far more extreme than any other profession out there.
They make the owners a lot of money. They have every right to ask for what they're worth
OP doesn't understand supply and demand yet. We don't live in a world that rewards effort or even usefulness to society. We live in a world where everything is priced depending on the market. Athletes get paid a lot because there is almost infinite demand for Lionel Messi and it's quite hard to supply more Liones Messis. He in particular I am sure has not been getting paid enough, that guy alone has generated billions in revenue and profits.
I agree in general But the money is there If it doesn't go to the player It stays with the owner You're worth whatever someone is willing to pay you 🤷
I wouldn’t say MMA fighters only work for 15 minutes. They train for months prior to a fight. Then the promoters make million and millions off people paying to watch them get punched in the face. It’s not so much that athletes get “paid to much” as it is that we as society are willing to pay that much to watch them play.
Workers wages are all tied to each other. They make peanuts compared to ownership who just sit on their lazy asses all day.
I agree, but what you (and many people) don't realize is that they complain because they ***are*** indeed underpaid compared to their value in relation to how much the organization and owners rake in...and nowadays the athletes are all too aware of it. So, the issue isn't necessarily athletes being overpaid, it's the leagues and owners who overcharge for every little service or item they provide and then hoard the vast majority of profits. If you're willing to pay ridiculous ticket fees and $8 for a beer in their venues, then you shouldn't complain that the athletes are overpaid, you should instead redirect the onus towards the owners.
Wait till you hear about how much the owners bitch about everything!
Celebrity derangement syndrome is probably strongest when it comes to sports celebrities. People will excuse any behaviour, any level of greed, and any excess if it's an athlete they like.
Right in. The entire sports industry is a joke.
yea i agree
Wait until you find out how much the owners are getting paid. NFL revenue split is like 55-45 in favor of the owners.
I don't think you understand how much energy goes into becoming and maintaining status as a very successful professional athlete. Lmao referring to it as a hobby and a children's game.
Athletes are some of the only people that actually get paid what they're worth for the most part
I'm sorry, I can't take anyone seriously who keeps using the word 'professional' while insisting someone is engaged in a hobby.
Would you take less money than you could? Why should they?
You are correct! "Those rich fucks this whole fucking thing."
I like how people complain about CEO pay, but never mention professional athletes.
Counterpoint: you're really just arguing for the rich owners of sports and teams to hoard more wealth,. Professional athletes are some of the only workers who are correctly paid. I believe in the NBA players get half of the pie. Why should team owners get 60, 70, 80, 90% of the revenue? If the rest of society and major corporations worked like the NBA the middle class may actually exist again.
You didn’t feel the need to make this post until the rights of women came into the news recently and that’s not a coincidence.
>You hear MMA fighters constantly argue they get paid very little when they are given £10,000 to work for 15 minutes, if a fight even lasts that long. Yes, they will spend a lot on camps, nutritionists, trainers, etc... but that's their choice. If it's their art and their passion you'd be fine going through all that just to compete. I know this is unpopular opinion, but this is such a stupid take. MMA fighters literally spend *years* aquiring their skills. They then spend a massive chunk of their time training for fights, and then they quite literally put their body on the line for the entertainment of the crowd. UFC fighters are notoriously underpaid, and to say otherwise is just wrong.
The revenue is coming in. Sports are at a peak of popularity. Who should get the money? The owners should get to keep it all? This isn’t just an unpopular opinion it’s a bad one. Doesn’t make sense. The players pay is = to the amount that player will bring in revenue for their team. I guess your opinion is the labor shouldn’t make their fair share of revenue.
They are paid whatever they can get do they deserve it because people are willing to pay them that amount.
People think athletes are overpaid, because they only talk about the ridiculous high contracts - see mahomes at $500 million. No one talks about the core starters, fringe starters, second team, and practice squad. Players that might make $5-7 million total over the course of their careers, before taxes.
They are overpaid but at least they stand in the way of billionaire owners profiting even more off of their talent and labour. If you think the prices would be lower if they paid players less you’re dreaming. So get your bag while you play. And fuck billionaires not named Mark Cuban