Professional Athletes Salaries
Boom or bust, pro-athlete salaries have soared over the past decades. In the 1920’s, professional athletes were paid a few hundred dollars per game and held off season jobs. In the 1950’s, this changed as television was introduced and broadcasting rights increased player salaries. Now even with salary caps being put into place for some sports, salaries have far outpaced inflation. For instance, the MLB average salary has increased from about $300,000 to 3.2 million since 1985.
The four major sports in North America have a wide range of salaries. In Major League Baseball, the average salary is 4.4 million with the highest being 32 million. In the National Football League, the average salary is 2.5 million
Major League Baseball players average just over four million a year making it the second highest paying sport. Players determine win-loss records which drives ticket sales which creates revenue and so on. This is why player salaries is one of the most critical aspects of running a MLB team. These salaries are negotiated using statistics such as batting average, on base percentage, hits and more. When negotiations are not working, an arbitration process is used which is unique to the MLB.
Do you think professional athletes are overpaid? You might think they earn more than what they are worth for playing half a year, but athletes have many things which contribute to their salary. Some of these things include their earnings from endorsements, ticket sales, performance, merchandise, their social contributions, and TV ratings. Although there are many factors that contribute to their salary, professional athletes may be overpaid because as a society, we contribute to their success. So, in the end, part of the athlete’s salary comes from the people who support the sports in the first place. These are just some of the reasons why athletes are paid so much money.
Every sports team/organization operates the same when it comes to salaries some players get paid more than others and salaries fluctuate based on the economy. In the 1920s the average monthly salary for a Negro baseball player was about $230 which is about $2,760 annually. Whereas in the 1920s the average annual salary for a major league player was about $5,000 to $6,000. Then the dreaded 1930s hit the decade of depression. Despite the failing economy baseball was and is America's pastime and is always popular among the people. People would always manage to go see a baseball game every now and then. This would allow for an average annual salary increase of about $1000 from about $5000-$6000 to $7000. It obviously made sense that as the economy is failing salaries would start to decrease. Of course they did Negro baseball players monthly salary went down from $230 to $170. Which would be $2,040 annually about $720 less than the previous
Are professional athletes overpaid? This topic has been argued for some time now. It is said that pro athletes are paid way too much money for playing a sport. On the other side, there are the ones that say that the money is fairly deserved because of their hard work to get to where they are. Should pro athletes ' salaries drop or stay as is? Do the top athletes deserve their pay?
The four major professional sports in America are MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL. Out of those four, only Major League Baseball does not have a salary cap. A salary cap keeps players salaries from getting to high because of the need to get your whole team under a certain dollar amount set by the league.
It is unbelievable how much sports players get payed to run around for about 3 hours throwing balls and exercising. To start the players that get paid the most are NBA (National Basketball Association) get $5.15 million per year. Next the players that get paid the most are in the MLB. Each year they get an average of $3.2 million. After MLB, NHL players get paid the third most. They average 2.4 million per year. Last but not least the NFL players get paid the 4th most in the whole world. The minimum salary
In the professional world of sports, the athletes can make more than $100,000 to well over $1,000,000. Earning that amount of money is a dream for many college athletes have when they make it into the professionals. There are college athletes and well-known figures in sports around the country who believe that the athletes should be paid. The athletes should be paid because they claim that the level they play at is close to the pros and that they also bring crowds of fans into their games just like professionals. However, college athletes do not get paid a salary unlike they're professional counterpart, instead they receive scholarships that reduce the amount of money they have to pay for college.
IF you don’t think athletes are overpaid your whole opinion about that will change after reading this. There is no reason a person should be paid over 20 million a year unless they discover something new like a disease or cure for cancer. You should be paid like 10 million per year not 150 on average.Normal people only get like 75000 a year but nba people get 50 million. Or there are most NFL players getting overpaid so its very bad on the payroll. The NFL and NBA need to get paid less with there association it is very bad with there system.
There is no doubt some of the highest salaries in America belong to professional athletes. Whether it’s LeBron James’s $19.3 million dollar salary with the Cleveland Cavaliers or Matt Ryan’s $42 million dollar deal with the Atlanta Falcons, professional athlete’s salaries prove just how valuable the players are to whatever organization they are a part of. (Forbes.com) In 2014 the average professional football franchise was valued at $1.4 billion and the average professional basketball franchise was valued at $1.1 billion so it’s no wonder why athletes can be paid such high sums of money.(Forbes.com) Besides professional sports American’s love college athletics, college football in particular. Drawing in an average of 44,997 fans per game
Players that are in the pros make the big bucks. Some of the top notch players in each sport make millions and millions of dollars. For instance Albert Pujols plays baseball and is arguably the best player to play the game right now and signed a 9 year contract that is worth over 200 million dollars! Football fight to get bigger salaries because they feel the need to get paid more since they have a greater risk of getting injured. Baseball the players don’t argue as much as football players when it comes to salary.
Salaries in the majors are obviously less than those in the NFL but careers in professional football are shorter than those in professional baseball. Indeed, football make big money really quickly but since baseball careers last longer than football careers, over time, baseball players will make more money because their longevity for playing is extremely high (Berg). A great example of this is the comparison between recently retired star wide receiver Calvin Johnson and Jeff Samardzija, a pitcher for the San
“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.
The reason MLB players make so much is because there are 162 games per team a season not including the playoffs. Where as in the NFL there are only 16 games not including the playoffs. With baseball players playing multiple games per week & football players playing one or two games a week but usually one the money start to add up. It has also been argued that college athletes should be paid for what they do. While the NCAA is completely against collegiate athletes getting paid. However, that does not stop some players from getting money. Houston Texans running back Arian Foster came out and said in an interview that while playing football at Tennessee he took money on the side because he didn’t have enough money to eat. “My senior year I was getting money on the side.”- Arian Foster. “I really didn’t have any money. I had to either pay rent or buy some food.”- Arian Foster Also just last season Texas A&M Quarterback Johnny Manziel was put under investigation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for supposedly receiving money for a large amount of autographed memorabilia that he signed. The NCAA is completely against collegiate athletes receiving money.
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.
Sports are part of the everyday life of many people across the world, and in the United States sports are even more present in its society's life due to the fact that there are four major sports in the country. But should the professional athletes from these sports earn salaries as high as ten or twentieth times more than the national average wage? The answer should be NO. Professional athletes must be well remunerated but can not be overpaid when there are many issues around the world that can be solved with money. At this present age, professional athletes do not play for the love of the sport, and what they really care is what is going to be the amount of money in their contracts. The fans who support their teams have the majority of guilt in the high salaries of these athletes. Any team or franchise of any sport will not be able pay excessive salaries to their players if they do not sell jerseys, tickets, packages trip, accessories related to players, and games package on TV cables. The national government should intervene in the sports federation's policies and set a salary cap that do not diverges from its population reality.