I’m retired, but I still like my diversions, especially given the plethora of bad news that fills much of our media.
Like many of us, sports and games are fun for me, sports to watch more than play now, although I’m not nearly as avid or talented as most of my friends. Enjoying a beer in a bar after golf is always a good escape. Most bars have televisions, often plenty of them, showing pro games, replays or sports news. It entertains us, but mostly it inspires our sports-driven conversations when they’re not driven by health complaints and updates. The bars are full of people like me and my friends. It’s a culture.
Talk is usually about great players and plays, championships and player prospects. One topic is money versus talent, particularly popular recently because NHL free agency picks by teams occurred last month. Free agency is a feeding frenzy, with offers and trade deals flying fast and furious. It’s mostly done in one day. Afterward, sports analysts and enthusiasts opine on which teams made the best deals, which is based on the quality of the player for the contract to get him.
Professional athletes make very good money; some, the best usually, make obscene salaries. In 2023-24, the highest paid athlete in the world was Cristiano Ronaldo, a pro soccer player now playing in a Saudia Arabian league, who earned $260 million in salary and endorsements. The second highest was pro golfer Jon Rahm, who plays for the new Saudi-backed LIV Golf as well as in the PGA, who earned $216 million. The top 10 earners in 2023-24, which included five soccer players, three NBA basketball players, one golfer and one NFL quarterback, together earned almost $1.4 billion (notably, NHL players earn considerably less). The top 50 players in the world earned almost $3.9 billion. That’s an increase of about 13 per cent from the previous year.
These are the best of the best and worth good money and benefits. But even some of them marvel at what they make. But as actress Elizabeth Taylor once said about starring in the 1963 movie Cleopatra, “If they’re stupid enough to pay me a million dollars to act, why would I be stupid not take it?” A million dollars is almost a rookie salary for males in most professional sports. The top female pro athlete, tennis player Iga Swiatek of Poland, earned about $24 million in 2023 (seven of the top eight earners were tennis players, one a skier). Collectively, the eight earned $137.3 million, or 11.5 per cent of their top eight male counterparts.
Then there are the team sport contracts, which can run for eight or more years, depending on the sport and the rules a league has on terms in order to try and keep the sport competitive. Shohei Ohtani, a Japanese baseball player with the Los Angeles Dodgers, recently signed a contract worth $70 million a year for 10 years (he’s deferring $68 million a year so the team can avoid penalties). He’s 30 years old, a ripe age in professional sports.
I don’t think many of us would argue that the best of the best, in sport, business, science or in any profession, should be well-paid. But the so-called one-percenters with ginormous incomes have got the rest of us asking if our values haven’t been corrupted. When the high cost of living everywhere has so many people, including middle-class folk, struggling to pay bills, shouldn’t we strive to seek at least a slightly better balance of benefits?
