ErikRaven – Don’t bother looking for the clearer explanation. You do understand the manner in which those guys are worth those salaries. You just phrased it a little different than the prior posters.
Batgirl – okay, so the Cards didn’t make it to post-season. But I bet the attendance at home games was way up, as well at the revenue from tv rights.
RTFirefly wrote:
I have to disagree with the second half of your statement.
TV networks are run entirely as private enterprises. The only money they make is off of advertisers. It is the networks, not the local governments, that sign the deals with sports teams to air their games live.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
Let’s not forget something in the equation.
At the most, a professional athlete has maybe 15-20 years of a career, and those are majorly in the minority.
To put it in perspective, a vast majority of professional athletes in every sport (save for golf or bowling, thinks which pay based on performance only anyway) is RETIRED before they would be old enough to run for this country’s presidency.
So, given this fact of the career they choose, doesn’t it make sense that they make more a year? Because you or I can devote upwards of 50 years to our careers.
Yer pal,
Satan
Satan–then let them get a freaking job after they retire at age 35!
JoeB–1) people DO complain about entertainers’ salaries (2) we aren’t forced to subsidize movies and TV the way we do sports, (3) Even as a Cubs fan, I don’t know if I actually get entertained 162 games a year, (4) “Friends” isn’t paying a untility coffee shop patron a million a year (5) Friends costs me nothing. Even if I go to the new Matthew Perry movie (right!) it’ll cost me less than $10. Bets on seeing a Cubs game for that? Double the bet on seeing it from any seat I choose?
Disreputable is right. There is no free market in sports if the taxpayers have to subsidize them. My basic view is that if we have to subsidize, then EVERYONE is being payed too much!
Bucky
Oh, well. We can always make more killbots.
tracer:
Using the public airwaves.
PTV, my point would be that the city would be realizing most of those benefits with their old stadium, without paying another nickel, rather than being extorted into spending a quarter of a billion dollars on a new one.
Granted, but it explains why they are willing to be extorted, and why St. Louis was willing to be extorted to GAIN the Rams, and and and and…
“The large print givith, and the small print taketh away.”
Tom Waites, “Step Right Up”
PTVetc wrote:
“If you sign a 3-year contract as a free-agent, you are bound by that contract for 3 years. If you, as a liquor distributor, sign a 3-year contract to supply alcohol to a bar, you are bound by that contract for 3 years.”
The point is not the length of the player contracts per se, it is the relatively limited number of free agent ballplayers available each season. There are 30 Major League Teams, with 30 RFs. If only 5 RFs are available at any one time, and only 5 teams that need a RF, the price for the best of the 5 available will skyrocket, and then the other 4 RFs’ salaries will also skyrocket based on a piggyback effect from the general market price going up. Other players will use the higher salary as a benchmark in arbitration to continually rachet their salaries up. This arrangement is a lot of things, but a free market it ain’t.
Buck, I certainly agree with you on the taxpayer subsidized stadiums issue, I am against it. As far as your numbered points:
(1)People don’t seem to complain about entertainers’ salaries as much as they do athletes, but maybe that is just my perspective. I don’t see any hot Entertainers’ Salaries threads around.
(2) See above.
(3) There are 162 games provided, if you mean some of the games suck, so do some episodes of Friends.
(4) Because of the number of games played, money brought in from TV and ticket sales, etc., the sports market will support a salary of a million a year for some utility infielders and other non-starters. Again, if we all stop watching the games, buying the products advertised during and at the games, going to the games, and buying the merchandise, they won’t have the money to pay the athletes. That is the free market economy. I see a few more Cubs hats and shirts than I do Friends clothing.
(5) You can watch, on TV, 20-30 new Friends shows per year for free. You can watch, on TV, close to 162 Cubs games per year for free. The fact that you have the choice of going to see the Cubs live, if you are willing to pay the price, does not diminish the fact that you get more entertainment hours per year for free from a baseball team. As far as seeing a Cubs game for $10, try http://www.majorleaguebaseball.com/u/baseball/mlb/teams/CHC/stadium.htm
Looks like you can get weekday seats for as low as $6 and weekend as low as 10. Sorry if it is not the seat you want. If you won't enjoy the game more than the Matthew Perry movie, vote with your and go to the movie. For now, enough people use their money on sports to support the salaries.
Back to your taxpayer support point, I do think sports make enough money to buy their own venues, and there is no reason why taxpayer money should be spent on this. I don’t think it is a big enough factor to explain how the teams have the money to pay the athletes, I think they would have enough even with the expense of building their own venues.
True, but it’s still legal extortion, not a free-market situation. It’s not money they would otherwise spend, most times.
I would bet that most of the sports stars salaries are paid by advertising revenue. So even if I continue my boycott of professional sports, it doesn’t matter. I’m still ponying up every time I buy a case of beer. Oh yes, and don’t forget to add the .5% sales tax increase for the new stadium.
Cincinnati just signed Ken Griffey Jr. for $114m over several years. That’s $39,041 * per day *. Is that too much? Puh-lease.
Of course, Regis Philbin is reportedly getting $100,000 per episode of “Who Wants” and will increase that to $250,000 per show come contract signing time. Admittedly I could never play ball even half as well as Griffey, but geesh, I think I could read a damn card.
Actually, Joe, I can watch Friends about 700 times a year in my market–sure, they’re reruns over and over again, but most baseball gaems are essentially similar (I like baseball, but I would guess you would agree that this is true).
We don’t have a free market anywhere in sports anymore. The teams are mostly subsidized via stadia and free airwaves, not to mention that we all pay the interest on borrowed money for stadia.
They can pay a .210 hitter with no power a million mostly because we subsidize them. Sports salaries were pretty much in line with upper middle class until a combination of free agency (good) and hijacking of public monies (bad) in the 70s meant a non-free market explosion and inflation.
Bucky
Oh, well. We can always make more killbots.
I’m glad I started this. I’ve learned a bit and confirmed what I already knew and read some opposing viewpoints. Good stuff, guys. My view:
If sports were not subsidized by the public, I’d have no complaint about salaries. If the salaries came solely from the revenue from tickets, concessions, parking and commercial advertising, I’d have no complaint.
But it doesn’t and I do. Even if I never go to another baseball or football game, I help pay for the local teams through my taxes. I have no complaint about my taxes going to firefighting, paramedics, police, roads, trash pickup and other services, but sports… No thanks. That’s why I’m glad L.A. voted not to subsidize a new NFL stadium, even though I like football (I sure feel sorry for the taxpayers of Houston), and why I’m glad the new Staples Center was built without public money, though I could not care less about basketball and hockey. (It will be used for the Democratic National Convention, BTW.)
A bit of history: Baseball salaries did not get so high until after lawsuits were filed against Major League Baseball by the late Curt Flood of the St. Louis Cardinals on January 16, 1970, and by Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally in 1975, all demanding the removal of the standard reserve clause that bound a player to the same club at the discretion of the club. In other words, the reserve clause meant that a player could not leave a team that was paying him less than his worth and go for another one that would pay more even after his contract had expired, unless the team holding that contract agreed to let him go. Also, a player, no matter how long he had played, could be traded against his will, just as Babe Ruth was traded to the Yankees from the Red Sox in the beginning of his career and then traded to the Boston Braves at the end of his career.
Curt Flood called this slavery. Compensated slavery (he was making $90,000), but slavery nonetheless, in violation of the 13th Amendment. He found a lawyer to plead his case (Marvin Miller), filed his grievance and argued it all the way to the Supreme Court…
…where he lost, 5-3. However, there was so much publicity attached to the case, the people were more familiar with the particulars when Messersmith and McNally filed their grievance in 1975. This case did not go to the Supreme Court, it went to arbitrator Peter Seitz, who ruled in their favor. Flood said bitterly, “The Supreme Court decided not to give it to me, so they gave it to two white guys.” (Flood never played another game after filing his suit in 1970. No team would sign him.)
All this info, and more, is available here.
Curt Flood passed away on January 20, 1997, from throat cancer.
>< DARWIN >
__L___L
If you’re in a city big enough to have a major league franchise, odds are there’s a second-tier team somewhere around. Here in St. Louis we have minor league hockey, minor league basketball and minor league soccer available. We used to have minor league football, as well. Lots of good, cheap seats and promotional packages that make them even cheaper.
Of course, no one watches them. They’re lucky to get a couple of thousand fans per game. That’s about what a good high school homecoming gets around here.
Tired of all the advertising surrounding major league sports? Try going to a minor league game. At the last IBL game I went to, it felt like EVERYTHING was sponsored. They even dragged a big couch courtside so some lucky winner could get “the best seat in the house.”
If you hate sports, you can rail against the use of tax dollars. But if you’re not railing against the use of tax dollars for art museums, symphonies, parks, and everything else that isn’t a necessary public activity, then what we’re really fighting about is my taste vs. yours.
The Guthrie Theatre in MN is trying to get about $50 million in support from the state and local governments. Now, I’m in theatre. I write, I direct, I act. I love theatre. I think it enriches lives.
And I still say that they should build their own damn theatre complex with their own damn money. (Actually, I woul,d rather they not do that either, but that’s another story.)
Some support for local sports is warranted by gov (local, mostly amateur sports). I think some support for local arts is also warranted.
But the big boys can pay for themselves, whether it’s the Twins or the Guthrie.
Bucky
Oh, well. We can always make more killbots.
Who is this person “forcing” you to be a sports fan? Have you called the ACLU about this horrible constitutional riight to not be a sports fan which is oobviously being denied to you?
Yer pal,
Satan
I believe he is referring to the fact that his tax dollars are going toward the sweetheart deal the teem is getting.
“The large print givith, and the small print taketh away.”
Tom Waites, “Step Right Up”
FWIW, concerning the history of public subsidies of sports teams, such things predate the 1970’s. For example, in the mid-1950’s the city of Los Angeles gave Walter O’Malley some prime real estate to use for stadium construction to get him to move his (and they were his, not Brooklyn’s) Dodgers to L.A. O’Malley wanted NYC to use eminent domain to condemn land for him to build a new ballpark, but when they couldn’t come to terms he turned to L.A.