Hey everyone,
While executing experiments for my University work I decided to write about a few more personal topics which are quite dear to me.
As a human being, I'm utterly interested in the development of our society, that being said, I want to make clear that the views presented in this row of posts present my personal opinion and do not have to be seen as facts.
Brake Candidate #1 - Professional Sports
First of all, a reminder, I don't think that watching Professional Sports is anything offbeat and I also don't want to say that you're wasting your time with it.
More importantly I want to focus on the amount of resources spent which go to a very limited number of individuals.
Let's take the english premier league as an example.
The average salary (per week!) is 50.000 pounds, which is roughly 70.000$.
At the current moment there are 512 players in the premier league.
Which results in an annual salary of
1.863.680.000$.
Let's enjoy this number a bit: Only soccer (or football) of only the english league takes a chunk of 1.8 billion dollars per year!
And that's just the English league and that's just soccer (football).
Let's calculate the value for the top 20 leagues in the world, considering that each league in the list spends half than the one preceeding it.
(They gain more but for mathematical purposes this is easier).
That'd be Sum(1.863.680.000/2^i)
At 20, that'd be a total sum of:
7 billion $ (per year)
And this is only soccer.
Taking the 5 biggest sports in the US while, their average salaries are quite close to our regression here regarding an article of the forbes magazine in 2016 here.
That means we can easily double the number we got already.
14 billion $ (per year)
Which is only the sum of the 5 mayor leagues of professional sports of the US and the 20 mayor football leagues in the world.
What we didn't consider yet:
- Golf (50 Highest paid golfers earn over 400 millions total here)
- Tennis (10 Highest paid Tennis players earn over 300 millions total)here
- Racing (10 Highest paid Racers earn over 200 millions total) here
And we're not even considering the additional money they get from sponsors, or what the trainers or managers earn.
Without excagerating we're talking about easily 30-40 billion dollars which go directly into the pockets of max 20000 athletes.
(Considering that the mayor percentage of the pile will go to around 200 athletes).
Some values to put this number in context:
That's roughly the GDP of Paraguay, a whole country.
That's twice as much as the German Government pays per year for research and education.
A researcher in the US receives between $47K and $120K following payscale here.
Following that, the average professional athlete receives more than 10 times what the top scientists in the US make. The top athletes receive more than 100 times more than the top scientists!
Therefore, with this money, we could hire 250k scientists at a 120k/year salary.
Or better, we could hire all 20k athlethes at an excellent salary of 120k + 230k scientists and everyone would be happy, that means everyone can watch sports and we can enjoy the progress of the human society.
Therefore, we have to ask ourselves, what can we do?
- We shouldn't pay any price. If the ticket prices are too high we should watch from home, if Sky bills us incredible amounts for the sports channels, let's search alternatives.
It might seem rough, and you might have to stay a year without watching your favorite team, but if not everyone would accept as easily to pay these absurd prices the channels and the teams wouldn't have another choice but would definitely have to decrease the prices.
Counter arguments:
Professional sports generate jobs and move the economy:
- Which is correct, but would they generate less jobs if the salaries would be 1/10th of what they are now? If you'd pay the remaining money to 230k highly paid professionals, wouldn't that be 230k additional consumers in your economy?
Professional sports help the exchange of other nations:
- With lower salaries and maybe a bit less rivality resulting from that, wouldn't that help that even more?
Professional sports get kids of the street and give jobs to people who might not be talented with science:
- Still valid with 1/10th of the average salary, and even more fair, why do scientists have to earn 1/10th only because they have "Athletic talent", maybe kids can even discover more clearly their true talents if they have a fair choice.
Professional sports keep the crowd happy
- And there is nothing wrong with that, but, was the crowd less happy 20 years ago when the salaries were modest? From what I am reading, people were even happier.
What else has to be considered:
Following the daily mirror (I know, not the best source), the average sports fan spends around 20000 hours on the couch during their live time watching their favorite sport, that's roughly 0.7 hour a day each day of their live at an average age of 80.
That doesn't include pre and post match research time, doesn't include the time people spend when they go to the stadium etc.
While it might be interesting, there might be other things way more engaging.
Have you ever thought about:
- Entering an amateur team to play yourself
- Learning an Instrument
- Learning a Foreign language
- Learning how to code
- Spending the time to write a quality blog?
- Spending time with your children, family, loved ones?
It's not bad to watch sports, movies or play videogames but there should always be a limit so we don't end up spending too much time with those and stop living in the real world losing friends, destroying relationships.
As a final remark, and as it says in many countries on alcoholic beverages:
Consume moderately
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The fact is well known but your numbers are simply killing it. It has honestly always been ridiculous to me how much people earn just to do some sports...
Sure they are very good at it but does that rectify a salary of more than 10 to 50x compared to everyone else? I definitely don't think so and am as well of the opinion that this money could be used in coubtless better ways. Hiring Scientists are just one example.
Definitely, I could write a whole year blogs about what great things could be achieved by that kind of an investment =)
It is indeed a 2 side cutting knife.
Let's assume that we agree that nobody is worth that kind of salary in sports.
But athletes are and should be seen as entertainers. Without a doubt they bring joy in the lives of the fans. They should be role models and some of them are.
A salary cap could maybe solve the exuberant salaries. But than there would be a bigger gap between the best and the average. For each big fish in the team, one also needs a smaller one.
Which I do find more intriguing than the salaries are the transfer fee. Like Neymar is really worth this money. Don't think so!
And yes you are right, athletes did earn less 20 years ago and were also happy! But I do think that much more jobs are related to sports now, then 20 years ago!
Everybody and everything is worth what a fool wants to pay for it. And in this case it is a lot. Also don't forget the impact of player agents! They take, in some cases, more than 20% of the salaries. They also created the steep increase in wages. What else should these clubs do with the money they are getting from the TV contracts?
It's definitely a very controversial topic, but it basically boils down to one of your sentences:
"Everybody and everything is worth what a fool wants to pay for it. "
Which is exactly what I meant, we should stop being such fools and serve them as much money, the less we pay, the less the TV contracts pay and the less the players get.
And gaps can still be percentages.
And
"But athletes are and should be seen as entertainers. Without a doubt they bring joy in the lives of the fans. They should be role models and some of them are."
Some of them are, but 90% are not.
And even worse, they even try to find ways to negate taxes even though they earn as much.
And we, even pay taxes for parts of the infrastructures their using.
you have nice point of view :). althought is different case but u can explain well. :)
I would simply say, balance is the key, like most of the things in life
I like playing those games. Where you mentally redirect money and remind yourself how wealthy we really are as a people/society.
I’d like to redirect all the money and resources that go into fast fashion.
I will continue this row of posts here and with a few more candidates =D
Good idea.
Maybe I’ll join you and write about how we could change the world by using home mixed cleaning products instead of chemical solutions.
But you did very well showing the actual numbers, I don’t know if I could gather that much info.
Definitely sounds like an interesting topic, though.
Your point of view is amazing ...its just motivate me .this type of post help to gethar more knowladge in this sector
You wrote something personal about the univercity work . A lot of good work. Thanks for sharing post.
your blogs are too long .. bt very interesting ..
what is this sir
very good post,@raycoms
Best of luck
i love you