Income Inflation in Sports
Should Professional Athletes Be Paid Millions of dollars?
Over the past several decades, athletes in society have been receiving inflated salaries that have made people question whether indeed they deserve what they earn based on what they do. Recently, we have seen big sports contracts being signed in the NBA. This is an act we have been witnessing not only in NBA but in soccer, athletic completion, motor vehicle races, among other sports over the past years. The worrying thing is that the amount of transactions being involved in the process continues to rise year in year out. The huge amounts of millions of dollars’ sportspeople are being paid raises the question as to whether these professionals in society deserve.
The issue of the number of millions of athletes are being paid can be viewed from both directions; why they are justified to earn such amounts of money or why they are not. One of the reasons why athletes need to be paid such millions of dollars is due to their determination. Indeed athletes have sacrificed a lot to reach where they are. For instance, during regular sports events and games, they sacrifice their family times and come out to entertain the public. These are the same people who are exposed to injuries several times, which makes them be at risk of suffering from a progressive degenerative illness, which leads to dementia as well as stress and depression (Piccioto, 2020).
The football association, teams, and even brands under which athletes work for the benefit a lot from players. Over the past few years, athletes have proved to be the main tool being used to sell more tickets in the form of adverts and their celebrity status. Besides, as much as we think that professional sportsmen and women get paid much, they end with a little money in their pockets due to various charges such as taxes. In countries such as Spain and England, foreign professional athletes are usually taxed high than the local athletes (Williamson, 2017).
However, there is still enough reason to approve the reason why professional athletes should not be paid such a hefty amount of million dollars. In my opinion, indeed, they should not be exposed to such amount of cash. One of the reasons is because it is a threat to the state of our different types of sports in the future. According to research, the increased rate of average normal American wage differs from that of American professional athletes poses a threat to the future of sports (Pollick, 2015). When the average income of ordinary American citizens is not increasing, while the professional athletes continue earning more, there is a possible hike in prices of tickets, merchandise price, which may discourage the fans from supporting the games. Other scholars have suggested that they are getting paid on what they don’t deserve. For instance, teachers provide an education that changes the nation in several ways. Hence, their magnitude of work deserves to be the one compensated handsomely (Piccioto, 2020).
Secondly, when athletes continue to earn millions of dollars, we are forgetting that we are diminishing the true definition of sports and perceive it as a corporate business. The high amount of millions of athletes are earning is encouraging young sportsmen to work hard to become professional athletes due to money attraction and not passion. We have witnessed the signing of players in NBA and football on expensive contracts, and yet they end up performing poorly during the following seasons (Piccioto, 2020). The increased rate at which we are growing professional athletes’ salaries is also contributing to income inequality within our sports sector. With substantial investment in some leagues, for instance, we have seen salaries gap differences whereby the players from low-level leagues do not have even minimum wage salaries. At some point, we have seen some players being paid more money than others in a team-leading to income inequality.
In conclusion, the inflated rate of professional athletes’ salaries is everywhere to be seen. It is not only present in many nations I the world. We need to think deeply about our future. However, it seems there is no possibility of a solution being deployed. Hence, we need only to opt for the long term repercussions that are coming to learn from experience.
References
Piccioto, E. (2020). Do Professional Athletes Deserve Their Inflated Salaries? Retrieved 21 April 2020, from https://www.theperspective.com/debates/sports/professional-athletes-deserve-inflated-salaries/
Pollick, B. (2015) The Sport of Shafting Fans and Taxpayers: An Application of the Propaganda Model to the Coverage of Professional Athletes and Team Owners.
Williamson, C. M. (2017). Taxation of Income on Professional Team Athletes.