Why athletes get paid so much
There I was sitting on the first day of the second semester in my fourth period economics class listening in on the discussion. First, Mr. Lindberg started talking about the meaning of economics and how it all works. Then someone asked him about his cardboard cut out of the NBA player, Kevin Garnett. He started working that into his discussion, about how athletes got paid such ridiculous amounts of money. Sitting there, I started to really think about it. By the time I got into my sixth period senior English class, I found out that we had to do a research paper. I knew what my topic was going to be about, why do athletes get paid so much? This was a great question that I was willing to search and find the answer to.
My research took my to so many different aspects of the big three pro leagues and how they all work, but first let’s start with how. How do they even get the money to pay these athletes so much? Well, this is kind of an easy question to answer. The biggest part of profit is from the dedication of the fans. “If Americans didn’t spend so much time watching and reading about sports, athletes wouldn’t be paid as much,” said former NFL player, Robert Smith. Exactly, the fans are the ones that go to all these sporting events paying ridiculous amounts of money for tickets and for team merchandise and everything else that involves all these sports. Yet they ask, why are ticket prices so high? Well tickets are pretty expensive. For normal season games to see the Seattle Sonics, the prices range from $9 - $110, but that doesn’t even show anything close to courtside seating. I remember looking for tickets to the past Lakers vs. Sonics game that was on February 28th at ticketmaster.com and noticed that they had tickets for more than $500. It’s so amazing to see that people really pay that money to see one game. Now to the recently built Seahawks Stadium, in their pocket schedule it shows prices ranging from $20 - $72. With club seating costing anywhere from $150 to $280 a game. Ticket prices haven’t always been this high though. On an ESPN show, a discussion involving athlete’s salaries Commentator George Will said, “...since 1998, ticket prices have increased by 37 percent” (Ley). The profit not only comes from the fans though. You have to remember those owners of the teams. “We have situations where we have owners entering the system who pay $500, $600, $700 million for teams,” said Sport Agent Scott Boras (Ley).
Do athletes even deserve to make such money? Is it fair that players that barely do anything in the sport make an enormous amount of money as well? Well there are many views on this question. For example, in sports there are many health issues involved. Athletes are constantly involved in injuries, [next page]