Professional Athletes Are Overpaid

Are Athletes getting paid too much? Some would say yes, some would say no. Athletes are paid based off their skills, talent and their work ethic. I believe it’s what drives kids and or students to strive to be their very best because they as student athletes can only dream of a life like this. One sport where people athletes are overpaid is Major League Baseball. Baseball players are given vasts sums of money based on their performance, however there are many other reasons that I personally feel qualifies them for high salaries other than performance.

Professional athletes are highly talented and determined entertainers with extraordinary physical abilities. They compete in various sports to entertain people and make a living. Those include basketball, football, baseball, hockey, tennis, and the list goes on to any athlete that gets paid to play. These athletes train really hard and for long hours to be the best at what they do. Fans pay to watch them perform because they really enjoy seeing them. Like other entertainers, such as actors and singers, athletes are paid large amounts for their performances. Professional athletes are not overpaid for the amount of physical and mental stress they go through to do their job.

Athletes should not earn much more than professionals who save lives, educate the population, and professionals who put their lives in risk for others. These athletes become idols and heroes in the society for being seen every week on the TV and be constantly on the news. When the real idols and heroes are the ones

Pro NFL players earn an average of 2 million a year only from playing in games. They can produce up to 1 million from commercials. From playing along with being in commercials a single player can earn an average of 4 million a year. They receive enough money that they can buy mansions and multiple cars.

The National Hockey League’s minimum salary is $500,000. The NBA’s minimum salary is over $450,000, and the MLB has a minimum salary of $400,000. So just to start out in any of these leagues, every single player is already making the same if not more than the President of the United States. Now the President not only makes important decisions that affect the course of our country, but he can also affect what happens in the entire world. How could an 18-year-old rookie pitcher with no experience professionally be started out on a base salary making more money than the president? One should be paid according to the value they serve to society. That statement holds no water when talking about professional athletes. It is so clear that these athletes’ salaries are not equal to their value to society. If so, the president would be

“Touchdown Patriots! 3, 2, 1! And the Patriots win the Superbowl!” Millions of pieces of confetti were falling on them, as if it were the money that they make every year. But wouldn’t you think that people, like doctors, would earn 5.15 million dollars for saving people’s lives every single day, and professional football players would make $189,000 - $258,000? It is actually the other way around. Professional athletes started to get paid for playing sports in the 1920’s, which is when people started to actually notice them, and they were paid, on average, 5,000 dollars a year. Now don’t get me wrong, getting paid to entertain people in fine. But today, they get paid 5.15 million dollars a year, just by playing sports. I think that might be going a little bit overboard. In my opinion, professional athletes get paid too much.

Pro athletes get paid a ton of money to wear specific sports brands like Nike, Adidas, or Under Armour. Lebron James gets paid $185,328 per tweet from his sponsors. “Lebron James’ opendorse estimation cost per tweet is $185,328” (opendorse.com 1). Furthermore, in 2015, 100 athletes combined a total of over $924 million in athlete endorsement earnings. Next, according to opendorse.com “The following athletes raked in over $927 million in endorsements over the last year” (Weber). Most important, Roger Federer is the highest paid athlete and gets paid $60 million a year just from sponsorships.

A professional world known soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo is the highest paid athlete with earnings to be over 88 million dollars. Compared to the highest paid female soccer player earning roughly 2.8 million dollars. This is one of many massive wage gaps in the sporting. People debate the wage gaps of sports for males and females should be less as they have the same skills. People also believe that males sport competitors for some sports are getting paid way too much, “Their wages should be halved and even some extremely good sports people should have theirs quartered.” In basketball LeBron James a professional basketballer has a salary of 31 million dollars a season. as this is compared to the highest paid female basketballer Elena Delle Donne who earns 4 million dollars a season. Roger Federer another world know sports person as a tennis

Stephen Curry makes $12.11 million in one year. So, the question is “Are athletes overpaid?” Many professional athletes get paid millions of dollars. Some people think that these athletes are overpaid, but professional athletes deserve their extremely high paying salaries. I personally think athletes deserve their unreasonable high paying salaries.

The fact that most professional athlete get paid more than the president is crazy. Why are professional athletes paid so much? One of the reason for that is marginal revenue. Marginal revenue is the additional Revenue gained from selling one more unit. So, every time a consumer demands one more unit, the Firm sells one more unit and the revenue goes up by exactly the same amount equal to the market price. Basically, the players produce millions and the get a nice paycheck for their contribution because the labor profits the owners and anyone else who depends on the team success. Marginal revenue does not change as the players produce more output because the amount paid is determined by supply and demand and does not change as players play more.

They get paid 500 thousand a year and all that they really have to do is show up to practices and sit down at games. That is ridiculous, people who don’t even play should not get paid nearly that much. Instead of these teams paying 500 thousand to a player who just practices they should put the money somewhere it will be used for a benefit. A NBA team's roster has 12 players, a NFL roster has about 53, and a MLB roster has about 40. You already know that not all of these players are all star MVP’s, so why are they getting paid so much? As I read (wikispaces.com) on average 3 of the 12 NBA players don’t play, 27 out of the 53 NFL players don’t play, and 20 out of the 40 MLB players don’t play. Imagine how much money is paid to people who only practice. That’s a lot of money that could be going towards a good cause like maybe stopping animal abuse or even giving part of that money to a shelter so the people who were less fortunate have more to

It is arguable that pro athletes are overpaid. There are people that think pro athletes are severely overpaid, and people who think they are underpaid. Athletes get multi-million dollar contracts and multi-million dollar checks every year. There are people like doctors, police, firefighters, even EMT’s, people that save lives every day, that don’t even get half of that every year. So do the people that go out and play sports to entertain people deserve that much money?

“It seems like everybody's perception of me is very bipolar. To one group, it's overpaid, overrated; to another group, it's underpaid, underrated, underdog. It's funny to me because there's no real balance.”- Jeremy Lin

Average people go to work everyday just like an athlete, so why do they get paid more than us? First, athletes are not the only ones that are in the sports industry. Coaches, trainers, etc., all are affected if money was to be taken out of professional sports. Lots of people would be out of a job if this were to happen. Next, athletes need money for when their careers

The passages present a discussion about arguments concerning whether or not professional athletes are overpaid. This is an important debate since professional sports represents a multi-billion-dollar-per-year industry. The two positions argue whether or not professional athletes should be paid the large yearly salaries they are paid. Both viewpoints have valid claims warranting consideration. For example, evidence suggests that people with far more important jobs are paid much less than professional athletes; in contrast, opposing evidence suggests that since professional athletes generally have short careers and must train very hard to build and maintain their skills, the higher salary is justified. While both sides of the issue have valid points, the viewpoint that professional athletes are not overpaid is the best-supported position, the position supported by the preponderance of the evidence cited in the passages. The strongest and best reasons supporting this position are that professional athletes must endure grueling and intensive training, they generally have short careers that often end in injury, and the amount that they are thought to be paid is often inflated. Accordingly, these reasons and opposing viewpoints will be discussed next.