Sports is a form of entertainment that is very popular in the United States and around the world. Pro athletes around the world are paid millions of dollars to play a sport. This controversy is the cause of debates constantly happening between sports teams and the general public. What makes this a controversy is that these athletes make more money than police officers, surgeons or even the president and they only thing they do is play a game. While there are a lot of people trying to be an athlete, it takes a lot of time, effort and luck from early in your life to become a professional athlete because not everyone can become a professional athlete. This perception of every professional athlete making millions in not exactly true. While there are many athletes who make a lot of money, the majority gets paid way less. So yes, I do think they deserve every penny they earn because just like other people they are just doing their job, except this job is not a 9-5.

As a child a lot of us dreamed to someday become a professional athlete looking up to players like Lebron James, Michael Jorden, Lionel Messi… who wouldn’t by seeing all the glitz, the fame and the fortune of some of these players. But the older we grew, the more we realized that the odds of becoming a professional athlete is very slim. According to Luke Kerr- Dineen the odds of a high school player becoming a professional NFL player is 0.02%. The odds of becoming an NBA player is smaller than 0.008%. The odds of becoming a MLB player is 0.15%. The best odd of becoming a professional is when playing Ice Hockey, the odds are 0.17%. Comparing these odds other things like to a car accident that shows that the chance of people dying in a car crash is 1 in 113 (0.88%). It is easy to look at these salaries professional athletes get and compare it to other jobs like teaching and shout that it is “unfair”. But the law of supply and demand is not something we can oversee. There are far more teachers, so their compensation is divided into smaller pieces. They provide a service to 100 of people at a time.  While the sport industry enjoys more scalability and exposure across all media platforms such as 24/7 radio, TV and the internet, providing their services to millions at a time. And fewer people can do the same thing they do at the same level of competition.  This shows us that being a professional athlete is one of the rarest job title a person can hold.

Many people fail to understand what it takes to become a professional athlete and to succeed at the most elite level of sport competition. They put as much or even more effort, dedication, skill and sacrifice in their jobs as a normal person’s profession.  From a fairly young age these professional athletes dedicated their lives toward perfecting their skill in their field. So once getting to the professional level, professional athletes spend uncountable hours in various environments such as gyms, baseball field, football fields… With the average season lasting from four to six months, these athletes practice almost every day and travel all around the globe. This does not include the obligations they have outside training. For example, interviews with the media or having to appear at an event. All of this takes up a lot of time during the season, but then there is the off-season. Because of all the media attention is seems that all that these players do is going on vacation in the off-season. But even during the off-season most athletes train and put a lot of time and dedication to improve their skill and be better at what they do. All this time practicing means they are sacrificing their time with their loved ones. “As fans, collectively we tend to view sports as fun and not work, so we fail to understand how uniquely skilled these athletes have to be” (Leland Faust).

The short career span and injuries are also a big reason why professional athletes make a lot of money. Unlike a regular job athletes on average have a 10-year career span and retire around the age of 40, while people with regular jobs spend around 40 years working and retire around 65 years old. This is because once these athletes reach the professional level they have a limited time to compete at their prime, where they are most physically and mentally capable and thus able to compete and perform well in their sport. It’s usually due to their decline in physical condition and younger more physical capable players coming in to the sport that makes it hard to have a really long career in sports. Another part of possibly having a short career is the risk of having injuries during and after their professional careers. Professional athletes are paid to entertain and excite the audience who paid to entertain the audience who paid money to watch these athletes play. This can sometime come at the cost of their bodies and can sometimes end a career. For example, brain damage caused by playing American football. According to braininjury.com, the average force needed to give someone brain damage is 50G’s or in simple terms it means that if you got hit straight in the head by a thirteen-pound object traveling at 20 miles/hour. Football players are subject to hits up to 200 G’s, that is 4 time the limit. Wearing helmets is a precaution used to prevent as much damage as possible but receiving these enormous hits day in and day out creates enormous physical stress which take a toll on the athlete’s body and can affect the life of an athlete after their careers. These are not risk that your average teacher or doctor faces in their daily lives. The longer these athletes play the higher the risk of being injured, the older the athletes get the harder it gets for injuries to heal properly and could hinder them from playing. The knee, back or head injuries are the most common injuries amongst athletes after their careers. These are also the hardest injuries to deal with because of the extensive use in our daily lives. “Combine this with the fact that most of the health insurance companies will not cover professional athletes, makes is so that the medical bill of a professional athlete ends up being higher than a regular person” (Chris Mueller). So, a well-paid, or at least a decent contract gives these athletes a financial safety net should their career cut should due to a unforeseen injury.

Before we start comparing the salaries of professional athletes with other things such as other people in the entertainment industry or other professions in the world. We should understand the what the role of sport is in our society and understand how the sports industry is a continuously growing industry. “Sport occupies an enormous cultural real-estate. It does not matter where we go, sport has no one demographic. They can be rich, poor, Democrats, Republicans, men, woman, people of beliefs and people of all ages. Sports has a unique ability which is that it can unify us in a way that nobody or nothing else can” (Leland Faust). For example, when in November 2015 England hosted France just four days after 130 people were killed during the Paris attacks, when suicide bombers struck outside the Stade de France before several mass shootings at cafes and restaurants. In an act of solidarity, the English spectators sang the French national anthem “La Marseillaise”, with the words displayed around the stadium. Unfortunately, the roles were reversed when the French showed solidarity during their game for the attacks in Britain in 2017. Sports and the stardom of these athletes can provide a sense of hope and unity amongst the fans and even amongst the population. Most of these athletes are seen as some sort of role models by the youths around the world. Sporting events has stopped wars before even if it was just for a couple of hours. Can we really argue the fact that they make millions, while knowing the value they bring to the world? Because of the value they bring to the world, they deserve their salaries

Across the world professional athletes are known for making enormous amounts of money. I’m not talking about sport like fencing, Minor League Baseball, D-league basketball, etc. When I use the term professional athlete I am referring to the five major sports in the world Soccer, Basketball (NBA), American Football (NFL), Baseball (MLB) and Hockey (NHL). Basketball professionals in the United States have the highest average salary for professional athletes in the world. Their average salary is 6.4 million dollars. Second in the list are professional baseball players, they average around 4.4 million dollars. Hockey professional in the NHL average 3 million dollars. NFL athletes have average earning of 3.4 million dollars.  Earnings of Professional soccer players around Europe average around 1million – 3.3 million dollars. While in the united states it averages around 300’000 dollars for MLS players. Comparing these averages to other profession in the entertainment industries. We see that most of these professional athletes are underpaid. For example, the voice actors of the Simpsons earn around $60’000/hour they actually work. Meaning if they worked a regular full-time job they would earn 120 million dollar a year. Sandra Bullock Earned 77 million dollars for one picture. Taylor Swift (a singer) or Kevin Hart (actor/comedian), each respectively earned on average for the past couple of years around 170 million and 90 million dollars. This is significantly more than what these athletes earn on average. It appears that the public perception surrounding athletes’ salaries are based on the highest stars rather than the entire industry. This perception is created by the 24/7 exposure that the sport industry gets. So even the smallest thing are blown out of proportion. In fact, Athletes are among the lowest paid entertainers, based on simple averages and after controlling for measured sociodemographic traits. (Martha Hill Zimmer and Michael Zimmer,)

“Unlike the most of us, they do not make the product. They are the product (Allen Golembek). So, it is just fair that just like people with regular jobs, athletes get paid according to the value they provide to their employer. Professional athletes who are in their first year of competing at the professional level are paid a minimum wage. This is because in comparison to other players who have been longer in the league they have a lower value or bring in less revenue. Athletes with enormous salaries are also the player who bring in the most revenue for their employers. For example, “The New York Yankee paid third baseman Alex Rodriguez over 20 million dollars each year because he generated at least that amount in ticket sales, television broadcasting rights and other revenue” (Zygmont, 36).  Even though they create so much value and revenue for their employers, there is still price control present in the professional leagues in the United States. This means that professional athletes can only earn a maximum amount of money in any given year even if they exceed that value, which is not the case in any other normal job. So, even though it seems that professional athletes make enormous amount of money, they are just paid what they are worth according to the market. 

One of many concerns people have is that the amount of money professional athletes earn. People are disgusted by the enormous amount of money professional athletes earn. According to them this money could be used to help feed the poor or help finding cure for disease’s. For example, the money used to pay Alex Rodriguez could be used to feed the nation’s poor for an entire year. It is ironic that the people who object these high salaries are a big reason behind the creation of these salaries. The fans are the ones who dictate how much money these guys make in the first place. The fans determine how big the demand market is for sport. This demand then creates the salaries for the players. So, if people stopped going to the games, it would create a decrease in demand and therefor it would decrease the salaries for athletes. But because people are willing to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars to watch the players play, it creates a high demand which eventually would add up to player receiving millions of dollars. 

Another argument people are using to confront the increasing earnings of professional athletes is that “police officers, firefighters and doctors save lives while risking their own and this for just a fraction of what sport stars make”(Mihir Bhagat). Furthermore, teachers or even the president of the United Stated makes significantly less money than the average athlete in the U.S. According to these people players should be paid less and the money should be used to raise the income for other ‘more important’ jobs. While I do agree with the statement that these other jobs deserve an income increase, I do not agree with the doing it by cutting athletes salaries. This is because most of the sport industry and sport franchises are privately owned. So, cutting players’ salaries would only make the owners richer. In fact, if we would cut every star athletes salary by half it would barely affect the other jobs. Instead, the U.S. government would collect a significantly less amount in revenue taxes. Resulting in less funds that the government can use to pay for these jobs. 

From spending countless hours perfecting their craft to spending time away from their loved ones to having the risk of a career ending injury. There are plenty of reasons why professional athletes deserve what they are paid. Many people need to understand that because of the attention the sport industry gets from the media, somethings might be blown out of proportion. So, it may seem that some of these athletes have huge salaries but in reality these salaries are not so high, because we have to include factors such as income taxes. Wages of professional athletes will keep rising as long as the fans keep buying tickets for the game or keep watching the game form home. The sport industry is an enormous industry, with yearly revenue of around 60 Billion dollars. In this industry athletes only receive a small fraction of what the owner of a franchise earns. So, if a franchise owner (employer) thinks that paying a certain amount to an athlete (employee) would bring value to his franchise, who are we to stop him from paying that athlete. We should just all forget about how much money athletes get paid and just realize how unique the athletes are and appreciate the wonders that sport has given us around the world. 
