Are athletes overpaid? Well, we
provide them with their salary. Even if you never go to the game, if you turn on to watch, you make them money. Advertisers invest
millions of dollars in these games to sell their products.The money then leaves our pockets when we buy tickets and the products advertised and therefore we pay for the athletes.
Yes teachers,
doctors, police, fireman, and soldiers are the
true backbone of society. They make much less money, but no one is
lining up to watch english classes. It is human nature to pay for entertainment. We support the sports, and in return we expect them to entertain us. We demand a quality product.
On the other side, this controversy has lately become a terrible plot to ruin sports for good. As certain sports become bigger in the world of entertainment, companies will continue to pay more and athletes will continue to demand more.From a personal viewpoint, I believe athletes deserve good pay, but in the recent decades, the pay has exceeded reasonable amounts.
Beginning in May 2010, ending in May of 2011, the top five most paid athletes racked in almost 270 million dollars, among these were Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant, and Lebron James. Media plays a major role in the salary race. As more people are recorded watching these events, the more the agents and teams will demand.
In an interview, Alan Ball (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Ball,_Jr.), a member of England's World Cup winning team in 1966, once explained that when he was playing, he lived and socialized with the people who watched him, now all the players live in big houses and ride in limos.
Even though my opinion is split in some ways, I'm interested in what you guys think about money and sports.
http://www.therichest.org/sports/forbes-highest-paid-athletes/
Personally I believe these long term contracts are complete garbage, and that professional athletes do not need to make such crazy amounts of money. In my opinion the entertainment industry (sports) is getting far to much money, and these athletes are leading the entertainment industry. Our soldiers over seas are risking their lives trying to make our lives beneficial and are seeing little retribution doing so. Also the families of a soldier who passed away in combat see very little retribution for the sacrifice their loved one made for us.
ReplyDeleteProfessional athletes should be getting paid based on their performance, as a result would get a different salary each season. Instead of tossing out a 10 year 275million dollar contract to Alex Rodriguez, make him earn it on a one to two year basis. Who knows what he will be doing 5 years from now, let alone the following season. Make him earn it, give him "X" amount of money for each game he plays, and how well he played in those games. Allow him to get paid at the end of the season after he's proven to the league and his team he is worthy of being paid. It's nonsense that athletes are getting paid such extreme amounts of money.
I can't believe how much they make in a year! What do they do with all that money? I can see how we pay them to play by watching and attending games but there has to be better places they could be putting all this cash rather then in their pockets. I think they're definitely over paid. I really like that end quote because I can see the reality in it, before they were 'famous' and 'rich' they were truly just ordinary like everyone else but had a talent.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your blog, I like that you looked at both sides of the situation and considered why it is the way it is.
I completely agree with Brett that professional athletes are grossly overpaid; at least the most popular ones. Of course they entertain us, win games for their clubs and train hard every day to stay in form but athletes should be paid based on their performance. A lot of these professional sport teams sign big name players to lock them up for the next couple of years, but there is no promise whatsoever that previous achievements will be accomplished again in the future. This reminds me of last year’s big money transfers in the Barclay’s Premier League for soccer players Fernando Torres and Andy Carroll. They had phenomenal seasons for their previous clubs scoring many goals, but ever since the big money transfer, they haven’t produced much or even come close to perform above average.(http://www.thisisstaffordshire.co.uk/Carroll-Torres-failing-justify-big-money/story-14446788-detail/story.html)
ReplyDeleteAll athletes are definitely in it to win trophies and championships but let’s be realistic, they get paid big bucks whether they win or lose so who cares if they don’t play well. The worst thing that can happen is to either be criticized by the media or get transferred to another team for another unrealistic number. I think anyone could survive with those consequences. I know I definitely could if I was getting paid millions per year. Many of these star athletes also make an additional huge amount of money on the side from endorsement deals with big brand companies so it’s not like their salaries earned from playing a sport is their only source of income.