Are Professional Athletes Overpaid? (Part 2)
In Part 1 I discussed several reasons why one could argue that Professional Athletes are not overpaid and that they make a market determined rate set by us, the consumer of their product. In Part 2 I'd like to go over some of the reasons that people say Professional Athletes are overpaid.
Remember these are not my personal views but some of the views I have encountered while researching the topic. I will let you, the reader, decide which side makes the best case.
Without further ado...
(Part 2) Professional Athletes are overpaid
1. They are entertainers, nothing more and nothing less.
In the grand scheme of things, professional athletes contribute very little to society. Do they save lives? Do they cure diseases? Do they make your life easier in any measurable way? I think most people would answer "no" to those questions...
One could conceivably make the argument that professional athletes are role models for our youth and that contributes something, but I am not sure if them being looked at as role models is a good thing or a bad thing. All I can think of are the old Charles Barkley commercials when I read that... "I am not a role model..." but I digress.
Professional athletes don't protect us, feed us, or provide any tangible service for us beyond entertaining us. What is that worth? Apparently quite a lot...
By comparison the President of the United States, a pretty rare and important job some might say, makes roughly $400,000 per year including several expense accounts. The AVERAGE salary in the NBA this year will be over $5,000,000 with the median salary being $2,500,000. Keep in mind that we are talking about the average salaries here, not even the upper end... does that seem equitable?
2. They contribute almost nothing to society.
This piggy backs off of point number one. Doctors save lives. Lawyers keep you out of jail. Accountants help you run your business that employs other people. Engineers design the bridge so you can get home from work quicker. The list goes on... What do professional athletes do? They entertain us... What is that worth? The market seems to say it's worth more than the teachers who educate us, the doctors who save us, and the electricians who keep us warm... How much more?
3. The vast majority make more money in a year than the average person will make in a lifetime.
Just to give a little perspective lets take a look at the average salaries of some well known and community enriching jobs:
High School Teacher $47,000
Accountant $67,000
Engineer $68,000
Dentist $167,000
Doctor $190,000
Now lets compare those to the average salaries of the 3 major sports in the United States:
NBA player $5,000,000
MLB player $4,000,000
NFL player $500,000
Do things seem a bit skewed?
Just to give it a little more perspective, the amount of money Lebron James will make this year for each basket he scores will be roughly equivalent to what the average school teacher will make in an entire year...
Another thing to keep in mind when comparing salaries is hours worked. In general each professional sport has an off-season and a regular season. The NFL season only lasts 16 games. The NBA is longer at 82 games, while the MLB is longer still with over 100 games played per year. That doesn't include preseason and postseason games which in some cases can be close to 50% of the entire length of the season. However, most employer's don't give their employees an "off season". They work 40 hours per week every week, with a couple weeks for vacation. Therefore, on strictly an hourly basis comparison, the pay discrepancy between professional athletes and most other jobs is even more skewed...
4. Is it responsible to give this much money and power to 18 year old kids?
This is an important moral issue that doesn't get talked about much. What kind of effect does the money have on its recipient? There is an alarmingly high bankruptcy rate among professional athletes. In fact according to Sports Illustrated, 60% of retired NBA basketball players will go broke within 5 years of retirement... Let that sink in a bit. Over half of them will lose all of their money less than 5 years after retiring. Also, keep in mind they generally retire well before the age of 40...
There also is an alarming trend of multimillionaire athletes thinking they don't play by the same rules as the rest of society. There seems to be a new professional athlete caught in some kind of scandal every week, from assault to sexual misconduct, even to murder. When someone is told by everyone for their whole life that they can do whatever they want, they often times feel like they really can.
It is irresponsible of our society to entrust teenagers and early 20 somethings with this amount of money. Most are not fully developed as human beings at this point and many of them forgo school to reach these professional ranks, only furthering the lack of education regarding money problem. What does it say about our society as a whole when we have our valuations so distorted? We value the guy that can put a ball through a hoop better than most but barely give a second thought to the guy who teaches us mathematical principals that we will use for the rest of our lives...
5. Are economics and the free market really setting their prices or are labor unions?
In the previous post it was argued that pure economics are what has determined the price point for professional athletes and while that is mostly true it doesn't quite give us the entire picture. There are labor unions in all 3 of the major professional sports made up of players and former players. They set the wages they deem acceptable to work for and the owners either agree or reject their terms. Just recently there was a huge surge in NBA revenue because of massive TV deals that went into effect this year. The players rightfully want their share of that pie. One has to wonder though, what would happen if all of the sudden every person refused to watch their games, buy their merchandise, or go see them in person... is it possible that society could reset their price points? What do you think?
Are professional athletes overpaid or is it really all supply and demand? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
As always, thank you for reading and here is your reward for getting to the end...
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Live well my friends!
Sources:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/contracts/players.html
http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/accountant/salary
http://waltonian.eastern.edu/sports/are-professional-athletes-overpaid/
Image Sources:
http://www.xtgn.org/35048/show-me-the-money
http://www.azquotes.com/quote/18435
Follow: @jrcornel
Great articles! I like how you frame this in terms of the questions rather than dictating your views. In general, entertainment is quite expensive for what it offers. Movie stars are paid highly also. But entertainment at that level is a limited market. Have you noticed that NFL football viewership is down in the US this year? That may indicate that the sport has reached some saturation point, given the other entertainment options out there. When virtual reality arrives in a bigger way, will this have some added effect?
Great points! I did notice that about the NFL. For years it seemed that football revenue could only go up, until now. It will be very interesting to see if VR disrupts these industries, I think it very well could. If it doesn't it will be interesting to see how these leagues are able to monetize it via VR. We will see in the next couple years.
And yes, leaving my opinion out of the debate helps me write more objectively, or at least try to :) In this particular debate it is easy for me to see both sides... there isn't really a right or a wrong answer. Thank you for the well thought out comment!
Bravo! Excellent post my friend @jrcornel congratulations
Thank you! Thanks for stopping by :)
they get paid according to what people in the market are willing to give them.. when they sell out stadiums for example.. = they get paid accordingly. If they don't perform well, they get cut/don't get paid well. The higher the demand is for their skill/service they provide, means more people will want the item, and therefore the higher the price will be that they get paid. Many professional athletes/artists etc also paid their own high personal cost sacrificing in order to perfect their talent over many years. Some start as early as 3 and 4 and dedicate their entire life to their talent. If Jim Smith creates a song and sells it for 1$ for example, and people voluntarily purchase that song by the millions, has Smith rightfully earned that income? I'd say absolutely.
Great points! Absolutely... not to mention the physical toll that being a professional athlete takes on one's body... especially football players. If people think athletes should be paid less the first place they should look is the mirror... we set their wages.
In a sense, I think it's idiotic. But, on the other hand, it's the market. It doesn't have to be rational. It just is what it is. And if folks want to pay 100 bucks to see the games, that's what's going to happen.
It's on this basis that I support it happening. I won't pay that, and very rarely even watch on TV. I also think it's very distracting from the damage being done by the elite, just like the Colosseum in Rome during the early centuries. But I still support a free market.
In part 1, someone commented that athletes give back to their communities, so this must be included too. I disagree, and think your piece touched on this with the role-model comment. The fact is, there are far more efficient means of giving back to our communities. And it's not like the overwhelming majority of athletes necessarily do so in any appreciable manner. IMO, it's kind of like supporting more taxes because some of it goes to welfare.
Yep, great points especially with the analogy at the end. It just is what it is at this point. It would be nice if we could somehow pause things and do a salary reset, rewarding professions by how much they benefit society... that would be amazing huh?! But, alas we cannot and such is the world we live in. Thanks for reading! :)
Yup. i don't give a shit if it means the 'market' decdes. Entertainers do deserve above average pay but it's ridiculous already.
Yep I agree... when an athlete makes more for making 1 basket than an educator makes in an entire year... things are seriously out of whack.
Professional sport doesn't contribute to the quality of life. Period. It is completely and only for the profits.
If there, by some miracle, would be no professional sport tomorrow, the world would be better off.
On second thought, there are two reasons for it to exist:
Interesting... in your eyes how does it work to control the masses?
Bread and games, as ancient Romans used to say.
Sports (Roman) arenas are substitutes for battlefields.
Crowd control is achieved with the overload of entertainment like sports, movies, TV shows, in recent times all the online worthless info floods ...
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Of course they are over paid, but that's there good fortune, I wish I could grab one of those contracts, unfortunately I don't excel at anything so I am out. Frankly I don't care, good for them, they can make all kinds of money doing what they want, I guess this is everyone's wish.
Where you got me is with the NBA salaries, what is the difference between Average and median (I am not a native English speaker).
That is understandable... Here is a simple explanation: "The "mean" is the "average" you're used to, where you add up all the numbers and then divide by the total number of numbers. The "median" is the "middle" value in the list of numbers. To find the median, your numbers have to be listed in numerical order, so you may have to rewrite your list first."
So it is like an average vs. the middle number... sometimes they are close sometimes they are not. The average can be distorted if the highest numbers are much higher than the middle numbers so it is important to know both numbers.
Does that make sense?
"all the market will bear"
anything else is stupid.
If you don't like it...
tuff.
watch oprah.