Why Are Professional Athletes Overpaid

Are professional athletes overpaid? Do they warrant the astronomically high salaries they make each year? The simple answer is no. No one person playing a sport that is meant for entertainment should make more than a whole family working at jobs that contribute to people's health, or make a city safer. Do athletes deserve high salaries? Maybe so, but as of right now there is so much separation between the pay of an athlete and the pay of the average american that athletes are quite frankly not worth the millions of dollars they make each year.
Being an athlete requires a specific skill set. They have ability that most others don’t have. However, this ability is one that is based off entertainment. Being an athlete falls under the category of being an entertainer as that is essentially their job, to appease a stadium full of fans each week. Now, would you say that entertaining people
warrants the crazily high money that an athlete makes. The league minimum salary of the NFL is 450,000 dollars. In the MLB the league minimum is 507,500 dollars and in the NBA the league minimum is 525,000 dollars. These numbers are minimums for rookies as well so a player of experience has a minimum of maybe 300,000 dollars more than a rookie based on the rules of the leagues. Those absolute minimums are more than enough to live one but athletes still demand more more money. There are crazy wages given to players as well. There are some outrageous pay days in some athletes lives as well. Floyd Mayweather, a retired fighter, made a guaranteed 72 million in his last fight. Giannis Antetokounmpo, a basketball player, signed a contract worth more than 2 million a year recently. In the 2015 season Ben Roethlisberger had a salary of over 35 million, and Cam Newton is on a contract worth 100 million dollars over five years. From a logical point of view it doesn’t make sense for athletes to be on this kind of pay when millions of dollars that they don’t even need could be used to fund other things. Somethings needs to change in the way players are paid.
We know athletes from different different leagues salaries, but how about we see them in context.
The actual minimum wage is 7.25 dollars, only 507,492.75 dollars more and you have the league minimum for a major league baseball player. A surgeon makes an average salary of 512,000 thousand dollars. This seems kind of crazy right, someone throwing a ball in a hoop to entertain makes at minimum the average of a doctor working hard to save people’s lives daily. The average pay of a construction worker is at around the 35,000 dollar mark. Again, crazy how an entertainer makes hundreds of thousands more at minimum than an average construction worker contributing to society. How much an athlete is paid seems outrageous when compared to other jobs in America, right? How is it fair that there is so much of a difference. Doesn’t it seem beneficial to lower athlete salaries and raise the salaries of everyday jobs to balance the difference and maybe help out people who may need the money. I cannot fathom that Floyd Mayweather has been using every cent of his guaranteed 72 million dollar
payout.
Granted, there is some validity to the pay of athletes. Many insurance companies won’t insure them so the high wage is used to justify that. In addition to that, athletes are by far the best at their trade. They do it best. If there is a small supply of great athletes in comparison to other jobs, they will get paid a lot more because of the high demand. No one can argue that being an professional athlete takes hard work, and not everyone is able to be one. In addition to this, it is actually us, the fans, paying them. Anytime someone forks out a large sum of money for a ticket to a game, a beverage at that game, or team sponsored merchandise, we contribute to the pay of the athletes. If we stopped buying these things, athlete pay would most certainly drop significantly. However, that doesn’t seem to be happening right now.
A report from the National Center for Children in Poverty shows that about 44% of children live in low income families. Almost half. This figure is staggering on its own, but if you again look to how much athletes are making and compare it to people who are struggling just to get by or raise their children, then the pay seems outrageous and unfair to the people. It is not fair in any way that so many children should be from low income families when an athlete makes more money than that family could even dream of and still wants more. It is terrible and embarrassing for a country to be in a situation like this where the pay gap is this high.
In summary, athletes make a massive summary of money. They make enormous figures that make the average pay of everyday jobs that embody hard work and contribution pale in comparison and seem small. This is not okay when the money could be used in better ways and most definitely could be spread to be more balanced. The difference confirms the point athletes are overpaid and shines a light on the fact that this needs to be changed.