Many people know that professional athletes receive excellent salaries that are hundred times higher than the average wages of average workers. Someone dreams of such income, someone else might claim that professional athletes are overpaid. Moreover, there are people who believe that professional athletes should receive more money than it is now. Where is the truth, and is the professional athlete`s salary is fair? This paper will answer these and some more related questions.
It must be said that there is almost no sense to provide average wages among professional athletes in this paper because the salary can not be very accurate indicator. The reason is very simple: some individual sports stars receive much more than others. Also, wages are different in different sports. Moreover, annual inflation may distort the real picture. In addition, this paper focuses on important reasons for high wages, but not the exact size of the salary.
Income of every professional athlete can be analyzed from an economic point of view. In fact, the income of the majority of professional athletes is a union of several parts. These are the official salary, bonuses, prize funds, corporate events, personal ads and sponsors.
It is important to note that the sport is a business. Professional sports gains a positive feedback if a team wins many times. In this case the team becomes commercially successful and it receives the opportunity to buy more skilled athletes. However, these conditions exclude the outsiders from the league matches and the intrigue disappears. Therefore sports federation (for instance, in football) often puts additional rules that do not let the rich teams inflate their budgets infinitely.
There is a perception in the society that athletes have a high salary because the education of the future world champion in many sports is not only time consuming and expensive, but also extremely risky. Imagine that you create a sports school. You selected children carefully, looked for the best coaches for them, invested in training, equipment and took care for the career of the graduates. Yes, for sure, some of your graduates will become strong athletes, but very few will become stars, and maybe even no one will. On their way to Olympus athletes will obligatorily face with injuries, and many other aspects that will not let you raise a future champion. Champion is a mix of the huge number of circumstances, so there will always be very few of the great athletes. And according to the economic rule of demand, almost everything, which is rare on the market, will cost quite expensive, and the athletes are not the exception. Thus, it is clear that every professional athlete is the result not only of million hours of practice, but also of a large number of strategically thought-out economic investments.
Therefore, the athlete`s wages is not only a reward for work. It depends on the athlete's skills and on the complexity, quantity, quality and conditions of the athlete`s work (Berri & Jewell, 2004). Also the salary of professional athletes includes compensation for work in conditions that deviate from normal, and in particular climatic conditions. In addition, professional athletes receive incentive payments for being particularly successful in competitions. In this case, as practice shows, the size of a professional athlete's salary is often set below the part of the bonus, which depends on the level of performance of the athlete.
The athlete, as every working person, might lose the jobs for various reasons. Moreover, the athlete is more likely to face with it. The life of every athlete is related to the daily risk of injury (in training, competition or in everyday life), or possible illness. Risks of this kind are an integral part of the professional activity of all athletes. For example, it is known that that the level of injury, which is now observed among professional footballers is a thousand times higher than in the industry. A professional athlete can be severely injured, that would make it impossible for him or her to work in the sport any more. Also, the retirement age among athletes is significantly lower than that of ordinary workers. As a result, the athlete may be unemployed in a fairly young age.
Therefore, from an economic point of view, the average salary of a professional athlete is fully justified, as an athlete works at 100% of the possibilities, in contrast to the average office worker (Carlin & Fairman, 1994). The athlete`s career starts much earlier than in other people`s lives. Athletes start their career at about 7 years. They train every day, 4 hours a day for many years, and just in 22 years they get more or less decent salary. So is it unfair? An athlete, after 15 years of work without pay, absolutely deserved getting good money. Moreover, after that the athlete does not cease to work hard, but rather work harder and in more severe conditions because the world of professional sports brings terrible injuries and wild fatigue.
Of course, there is some imbalance in the payment of athletes in different sports. For example, the Olympic champion in skiing, might complain that he or she does not earn even a half of what the thirtieth football player in the world ranking earns. But the fees depend on the popularity of the sport. Football players are getting more because this sport is more interesting than the others for the public (Dobson et al., 2001). As a result of the general commercialization of sport, there is a perception that athletes are people who throw money around. However, at the same time, less popular sportsmen of the top one hundred, or “non-elite” ones, might “receive a penny” if to subtract the price of their airline tickets, hotel accommodation and other expenses from their salaries (Schaffer, 2000). It turns out that only champions can normally live on prize winnings. Other Athletes should rely on sponsors.
Nowadays the sponsors and partners continue to increase their investments in professional sport. Despite the ongoing economic crisis, the sport continues to develop. The most professional athletes can lead a comfortable life, thanks to the sponsors who invest in sport. Sponsors like to invest in sport because with its help their brands get a really good media coverage. However, they invest only in the most popular sports.
Summing up, it is necessary to take into account that the level of salaries in different sports is different. In all sports salary depends not only on the professional level of the athlete, but also on the popularity of the sport. That is why, for example, football and tennis players get such huge fees, while the table tennis master and bike riders get much less reward. The sports economics is very uneven. Thus, some athletes may actually be overpaid, through public relations and advertising. At the same time, other professional athletes might be underpaid if they are engaged in unpopular sport for media services.
References
Berri, D. J., & Jewell, R. T. (2004). Wage inequality and firm performance: Professional basketball's natural experiment. Atlantic Economic Journal, 32(2), 130-139.
Carlin, S. C., & Fairman, C. M. (1994). Squeeze Play: Workers' Compensation and the Professional Athlete. U. Miami Ent. & Sports L. Rev., 12, 95.
Dobson, S., Goddard, J. A., & Dobson, S. (2001). The economics of football (pp. 106-130). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schaffer, R. (2000). Grabbing Them by the Balls: Legislatures, Courts, and Team Owners Bar Non-Elite Professional Athletes from Workers' Compensation. Am. UJ Gender Soc. Pol'y & L., 8, 623.
