Ridiculous pay for star athletes and celebrities is at least fair: they’re directly bringing in tons of money/profit, so why shouldn’t they be rewarded?
However they’re more a symptom than the actual problem. The real problem is the manipulative nature of sky high ticket prices, merchandising, ads, etc. how can these firms of entertainment command prices people can no longer afford, exploiting captive audiences, etc, to generate so much profit? The stars should get rewarded with a share of the profits they generate, but it’s ridiculous how much those activities generate.
In a sane world, I could afford to take my family to a game/concert/theme park, we can decide to bring in our own water, food and t-shirts only cost a little more than in the outside world, there are no ad timeouts, no region locking, no public funding, and the owners should be taxed at a higher rate than I am. But at every step, we’ve adopted anti-consumer policy, increased inequality, and it just adds up - society rewards exploitation, removes consumer protections and fairness. We’re no longer people, just products
Ridiculous pay for star athletes and celebrities is at least fair
Put another way, we as a society actually do spend wayyy more money on doctors, nurses, and teachers. It’s just that there are many millions of people who have to split that pot of money, whereas for pro athletes there are only a few dozen or a few hundred to split that comparably smaller pot of money with.
I might have the same favorite NBA player as literally millions of people in this country. I for sure don’t have the same favorite doctor or favorite teacher, though.
So if a genie showed up and said “give $1 to your favorite celebrity and give $100 to your favorite teacher,” we as a society would give way more money to the teachers, but each individual teacher would receive less than each individual celebrity who gets paid under this system.
No, you have it backwards. If the total pot for athletes is considerably smaller than the total pot for medical professionals, than redistributing it amongst medical professionals would not significantly increase their individual incomes because there are so many of them that each would only get a small share of it.
There are about 500 NBA roster spots. Total basketball related income across the league is $10.25 billion, and the CBA requires that player income make up half of that. So there’s $5.13 billion to split between 500 players, an average/mean of $10.25 million per full time player (some players get called up or put on reserve when injuries or something like that happen).
There are about 3.8 million public school teachers in K-12. If you took literally every dollar paid to NBA players and gave it to public school teachers, that’d be about $1350 per teacher.
There are other sports, of course, but we’re also talking about nurses and doctors and EMTs and public librarians and other important underpaid jobs. Taking all money from sports isn’t going to make much of a dent in those other jobs’ pay.
The NBA (American basketball) gives about 50% (though WNBA is single-digits), NFL (gridiron football) is at 48%, and NHL (hockey) is 50%.
The NRL (Australian rugby league) is less than 30% or around 41%, depending on which source you look at, and the AFL (Aussie rules football) is at around 32%.
This is a pretty one-dimensional look at it, ignoring for example if, say, Aston Villa (which is at 96%, apparently) achieves such a fair looking score by paying a single superstar rather than fairly distributing it across their players. But it’s at least a start.
Ridiculous pay for star athletes and celebrities is at least fair: they’re directly bringing in tons of money/profit, so why shouldn’t they be rewarded?
However they’re more a symptom than the actual problem. The real problem is the manipulative nature of sky high ticket prices, merchandising, ads, etc. how can these firms of entertainment command prices people can no longer afford, exploiting captive audiences, etc, to generate so much profit? The stars should get rewarded with a share of the profits they generate, but it’s ridiculous how much those activities generate.
In a sane world, I could afford to take my family to a game/concert/theme park, we can decide to bring in our own water, food and t-shirts only cost a little more than in the outside world, there are no ad timeouts, no region locking, no public funding, and the owners should be taxed at a higher rate than I am. But at every step, we’ve adopted anti-consumer policy, increased inequality, and it just adds up - society rewards exploitation, removes consumer protections and fairness. We’re no longer people, just products
Put another way, we as a society actually do spend wayyy more money on doctors, nurses, and teachers. It’s just that there are many millions of people who have to split that pot of money, whereas for pro athletes there are only a few dozen or a few hundred to split that comparably smaller pot of money with.
I might have the same favorite NBA player as literally millions of people in this country. I for sure don’t have the same favorite doctor or favorite teacher, though.
So if a genie showed up and said “give $1 to your favorite celebrity and give $100 to your favorite teacher,” we as a society would give way more money to the teachers, but each individual teacher would receive less than each individual celebrity who gets paid under this system.
That’s a really good point!
So they should the dramatically taxed and that money redistributed.
No, you have it backwards. If the total pot for athletes is considerably smaller than the total pot for medical professionals, than redistributing it amongst medical professionals would not significantly increase their individual incomes because there are so many of them that each would only get a small share of it.
Have you done the math? Because I think you’re underestimating how much pro stars make.
There are about 500 NBA roster spots. Total basketball related income across the league is $10.25 billion, and the CBA requires that player income make up half of that. So there’s $5.13 billion to split between 500 players, an average/mean of $10.25 million per full time player (some players get called up or put on reserve when injuries or something like that happen).
There are about 3.8 million public school teachers in K-12. If you took literally every dollar paid to NBA players and gave it to public school teachers, that’d be about $1350 per teacher.
There are other sports, of course, but we’re also talking about nurses and doctors and EMTs and public librarians and other important underpaid jobs. Taking all money from sports isn’t going to make much of a dent in those other jobs’ pay.
Source: Trust me bro
It’s interesting to look at how much money the players make in different sports, as a percentage of total sport revenue.
In the EPL (English soccer) you can find it broken down by team, with most of the top teams around 50%–70%, and league-wide they average 71%.
The IPL (Indian T20 cricket) on the other hand, players earn just 18% in the poorest teams (and even worse in the top teams).
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2023/03/29/think-ipl-players-paid-should-paid-three-times/
The NBA (American basketball) gives about 50% (though WNBA is single-digits), NFL (gridiron football) is at 48%, and NHL (hockey) is 50%.
The NRL (Australian rugby league) is less than 30% or around 41%, depending on which source you look at, and the AFL (Aussie rules football) is at around 32%.
This is a pretty one-dimensional look at it, ignoring for example if, say, Aston Villa (which is at 96%, apparently) achieves such a fair looking score by paying a single superstar rather than fairly distributing it across their players. But it’s at least a start.