García 1

Alejo García

Emily Litle

ENG 121001

04/24/2022

The Salary of Professional Athletes: Fair or Overpaid

In recent years, the strong growth of the sports market worldwide has been

highlighted, which has generated a greater participation in sports. This industry that goes

beyond what is seen on television and social media, has become a phenomenon of global

growth. For their part, professional athletes are the ones who have managed to propagate a

positive trend socially intertwined with the development and wide spread of athletes around

the world. Much controversy has been arising for a long time regarding what athletes earn

monetarily, and if they are being paid more than they should. So, it is necessary to ask

ourselves the following question: Are the salaries of professional athletes fair? There are

many things that must be taken into account regarding professional athletes since it is

important to note that they do not lead a very easy life like the one shown in social media.

The reality is that yes, sport catches their attention and they are passionate about it, but their

career goes beyond that. These athletes set themselves increasingly complicated goals, in

addition to training very often, and also stand out a lot in the skills of the sport they play.

Professional athletes are paid fairly because they receive back the money they are producing.

Making it clear that the career of athletes is also based on effort and dedication, we

can delve into why the debate arises. For many years, the idea has been that athletes are paid

more than they should, and to this is added the comments that employees from different work

areas are paid poorly. However, it is important to highlight why these comments arise.

Although it is true that an athlete does not study the same as a surgeon, a bricklayer, a sailor,

among others, these people also make a great effort to maintain physical health, sports
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qualities, contracts, and many other things. Another of the great reasons why there is so much

controversy is because these characters do not save lives, much less rule a country. However,

studies have shown that "In 2019, the average annual income for a US household was

$96,955 while the average income of a professional baseball player in the major leagues was

around $4.7 million" (Piccioto 6) which has shocked many people worldwide for obvious

reasons. In today's society, it is said that one should be paid according to the economic

importance of the work and its value to the community, which is why it could be argued that

professional athletes earn too much money if salaries are based on the value of their work,

since teaching is one of the most important occupations because the country’s economy

depends on how well educated the new generations are, and yet teachers are paid far less than

a lot of other work areas.

If we go into the matter, it is necessary to highlight who are the highest paid athletes

in the world and among them are Michael Jordan with a profit of around $2.62 billion, Tiger

Woods with $2.1 billion, Cristiano Ronaldo with $1.24 billion, Alex Rodriguez with $650

million (Booth) among many others, who without practicing the same sport manage to be part

of the most named athletes globally; which is a very important topic in order to understand

this situation since people tend to wrongly generalize the athlete's salary without taking into

account that athletes who are just beginning their sports career live a completely different

story

First, as we have already seen, there is an indication that the earnings of the

aforementioned athletes have to do with the public demand for the sport in which they are

involved; since the more athletes concentrate on becoming professionals, the more interest is

achieved on the part of the public, which generates more fans, the increase in profits by the

sports associations and therefore, greater income is produced for the athletes themselves. It

should be noted that the increase in the income of sports associations not only favors those
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who already work in them, but also new recruited athletes, and the creation of more jobs to be

able to supply and satisfy the needs of the directives and their members. As an example, we

can talk about the soccer club Real Madrid which is one of the biggest in the soccer industry.

Another aspect to take into account is that by saying that all athletes generate

exorbitant income, we are generalizing the salary of all professional athletes, which is not

good since those who earn enormous amounts of money are those athletes known worldwide

such as Mike Tyson, Nolan Arenado, Novak Djokovic since these characters are blockbusters

and have a long history in the field of sport. However, little is said about professional athletes

who are just making themselves known or who have little playing time, such as the tennist

David Nicholas Lonel whose salary is around $16,366 (“Nicholas David Ionel”). These types

of generalization do not benefit the new professional athletes since they actually do not earn

an exorbitant amount of money.

Last but not least, it must be emphasized that the career of an athlete is not the same

as that of any other professional such as a lawyer, bricklayer, among others. since they can

play professionally up to a certain age; for example, the estimated average career for NFL

players is 3 years, soccer players 8 years, NHL 5-12 years; however these are not certain. In

addition, there is the possibility that they face an injury that ends their career as an athlete, as

happened to Alvaro Benito, a former soccer player who "spent seven years as a player with

Real Madrid before an injury forced him to retire at the age of 26" (Hodson 1); and also Earl

Campbell, an NFL player who "was diagnosed with a spinal condition where doctors said it's

a miracle he was never paralyzed during his playing days" (Dalton 2). Following with the

idea of injuries in the industry, imagine that a certain athlete dedicated their life to training

and maintaining his physical quality instead of studying anything else, for obvious reasons

that athlete is not eligible to continue playing, for thus losing the only activity of their

economic income. In general, athletes are known for their short stay in the sports industry due
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to external conditions which gives us a good explanation of why the salaries of these athletes

are so elevated.

Concerns about athletes' salaries have always existed, but so have other professions as

actors, musicians, and so on. They do not only think of their careers as a hobby, they do it

because they are passionate about it and because they want to entertain the public. These

professional figures give a lot to society such as entertainment, faith and illusion in such a

short time, that they are compensated with economic income.

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Works Cited

Dalton, Kyle. “How the Legendary Earl Campbell Narrowly Dodged Paralysis in His

Career.” Sportscasting, 10 Oct. 2020, https://www.sportscasting.com/how-the-legendary-

earl-campbell-narrowly-dodged-paralysis-in-his-career/.

“Highest-Paid Athletes of All Time: Michael Jordan Leads Star-Studded Top-25

List.” Sporting News, https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nba/news/highest-paid-athletes-of-

all-time-michael-jordan-leads-star-studded-top-25-list/111wewzd2j0gq1a5hddn1cqgkx.

Hodson, Tony. “Álvaro Benito.” The Coaches' Voice, 24 Jan. 2022,

https://www.coachesvoice.com/cv/alvaro-benito-real-madrid/#:~:text=Alvaro%20Benito

%20spent%20seven%20years,at%20the%20age%20of%2026.

Muhammad Abdullah Idrees, et al. “Sports Tourism and Its Impact on Economic

Growth of a Developing Nation.” Sustainable Business and Society in Emerging Economies,

vol. 3, no. 4, Dec. 2021. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.26710/sbsee.v3i4.2090.

“Nicholas David Ionel - Net Worth, Age, Height, Bio, Birthday, Wiki!” All Famous

Birthdays, 4 July 2021, https://allfamousbirthday.com/nicholas-david-ionel/.

Perez Esteban, Marc. El Salario De Los Futbolistas Profesionales: Naturaleza ... 7

May 2019, https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/tfg/2019/206954/TFG_mperezesteban.pdf.

Piccioto, Elad De. “Do Professional Athletes Deserve Their Inflated Salaries?”

Theperspective.com/, 3 Jan. 2022,

https://www.theperspective.com/debates/sports/professional-athletes-deserve-inflated-
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salaries/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20the%20average%20annual,a%20serious%20threat

%20to%20sports.