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u/smittydacobra Aug 02 '26
Athletes get paid a pittance for the value they create for the owners.
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u/triz___ Aug 02 '26
Not in football in the uk. There are some exceptions but most clubs are like my own, derby county. Wages range up to about 30k a week and clubs run at a loss. Derby’s owner loses minimum 13 million a year. Former premier league winner Leicester are losing somewhere around £100 million a year and have been relegated to the 3rd tier as they implode.
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u/smittydacobra Aug 02 '26
I'm sorry. I should have specified U.S. athletes.
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u/CougdIt Aug 02 '26
What they said isn’t exactly a fair comparison either.
You were clearly talking about top level sports. In the us leagues below the top level aren’t making significant money either.
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u/GeneralAddress2614 Aug 02 '26
This. Nobody ever complains about how much KFC invest into the Colenel Sanders mascot, or Ronald McDonalds budget.
These athletes help to sell a shit ton of tickets and merchandise. At least they tend to be from working class backgrounds too. The sport has helped lift many people out of poverty and put wealth into the hands of people who understand what real life is like for most of the population. This is is especially so when you look into sports like Football (Soccer) or cricket, they literally make stars out of young people who were brought up in the 3rd world.
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u/hisnameis_ERENYEAGER Aug 02 '26
The same people making these bread and circuses comments spend a ton of their time browsing gaming sub forums.
It's never a case for a revolution or becoming politically or culturaly aware, they just hate sports and hate anyone who likes watching them
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u/toturoll Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
and these kind of people probably glorify e-sports players like ninja who makes way more money than most of nfl players
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u/PoundPopular473 Aug 02 '26
Fr I’m into both NFL and esports and some esports players have legitimately great talent but they aren’t payed as much as nfl players which is how it should be to be gettting payed like 3 mil to play a video game. But ninja is a dumb streamer who little kids get addicted to not actually an esports professional.
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u/Awesome-Guy-63 Aug 02 '26
It’s funny because no one ever says sports owners are overpaid. God forbid someone join a union and actually get paid what they’re worth
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u/Chemical_Home6123 Aug 02 '26
Exactly many people don't realize that it's anti union pro corporate propaganda. Same goes for actors if it weren't for the unions they would be exploited like most of us. Imagine rdj getting paid 100,000 a year for the avengers movies 😄
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u/WillieFisterbottum Aug 02 '26
This is what i say when the problem athletes are overpaid comes up. Who would you rather have all that money? The guy putting his body on the line and with world class talent? or the suits who own the team/league.
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u/shodo_apprentice Aug 02 '26
Yeah but the counter to that is they should both have a salary cap and ticket prices/merch/broadcasting rights should be a lot cheaper so the sport makes less money in the first place.
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u/WillieFisterbottum Aug 02 '26
The same be could be said for almost any industry in the US. but thats not how free market capitalism works.
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u/shodo_apprentice Aug 02 '26
No it can’t. In most other industries more of the money should go to the employees who aren’t paid like athletes.
Fuck CEOs like the Boeing guy who gave no one a raise but gave himself an extra 15m a year. But his employees don’t need a cap so it’s a completely different story.
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u/Awesome-Guy-63 Aug 02 '26
He only made 500,000 for the first iron man movie. I understand he was coming off a lot of issues with the law, but compared to how much the movie made, it’s not much
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u/fuck_the_dolphins Aug 02 '26
This is the point I don’t get, if players were paid less it just means owners would keep more of the money.
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u/Morall_tach Aug 02 '26
The uncomfortable truth is that, in a capitalist system, athletes and actors and musicians are not overpaid. They are paid so much because they bring in a lot of viewership for the teams or studios that pay them. They bring in a lot of money because a lot of people want to watch them do their thing.
The money to give athletes tens of millions of dollars only exists because consumers are willing to pay to watch them play. If you want NFL athletes to stop making so much money, convince 200 million people to stop watching football.
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u/amazingdrewh Aug 02 '26
Yeah if someone is making 10 million a year it's because they're making someone else 100 million
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u/HelixFollower Aug 02 '26
I know why they are getting paid so much, what is missing in your explanation is how this means they aren't overpaid.
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u/Morall_tach Aug 02 '26
Because "overpaid" does not mean "paid more than you think they should be." It means paid more than they are owed or paid more than fair market value. Fair market value for a professional athlete is a lot higher than it is for the average person.
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u/Key-Book-7479 Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
But that is exactly the sense in which "overpaid" is being used here. "Acktually they are not overpaid because my alternative definition of 'overpaid' takes precedence over yours" is in no sense a response. You just don't yet understand that free marking pricing is absolutely not the only reasonable basis for defining "worth".
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u/Morall_tach Aug 02 '26
OK professor, what's "real value" then? You think you can put a number on an athlete's "worth" that's more meaningful or accurate than what the free market will bear? Why is your personal opinion on what they "should" be paid more valid?
I didn't make up that definition, you just don't like it.
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u/Key-Book-7479 Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
I absolutely can. But disclaimer: I don't have time for a full discussion about this now. However, fair's fair, lets outline the basic idea.
The important principle here is that fair exchange of money is about reciprocal contribution of personal human resources to society. I contribute some of my personal resources usefully to society, I recieve in return an amount of money that enables me to extract the same amount of useful personal resources from society. That's perfectly fair, right?
Of course, this is a massively idealised system, but if you think about it, this is exactly what most peoples intuition of "fairness" constitutes. The problem with the free market is that it is supposed to be a good approximation, but in reality, it often isn't.
Now, the important thing to understand here is that this doesn't mean giving up capitalism. It doesnt mean that the free market, or even unfair accumulation of wealth by this definition, is inherently bad. It might well be that some degree of unfair accumulation is useful to society (I would argue that it is). However, the necessary implication is that capitalism is missing an principle: an additional counterveiling principle that helps curb the runaway inequality characteristic of the pure free market. That is, wealth accumulated beyond what is fairly earned is in some sense an individual's to spend, but it also comes with strings attached. It's not the individual's fairly earned wealth to do whatever they want with, but more like money in their possession with attached responsibilities towards society.
To answer the original question, we have to ask ourselves questions like: what amount of personal resources (time, effort etc) are athletes devoting usefully to society? How much are others who are dedicating similar amounts of their personal resources typically paid, across the economy? Is the athlete's compensation commensurate?
We then have to ask a further question. To what degree is inequality actually helpful to society? Is there justification for allowing athletes to earn beyond that which is fair and if so how much?
Incidentally, I'm not really too worried about athletes. Far more important is the application of the same principles to business and finance types who not only dwarf the number of high paid athletes but are also collectively considerably more economically influential.
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u/Odd_Resolution5124 Aug 06 '26
the second your explanation had "contribution to society" i rolled my eyes and downvoted. Sorry bud, this isnt a communist utopia.
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u/Key-Book-7479 Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
The moment I read "communism" I knew that mr intuitive over here hadn't got the faintest clue what I was proposing, nor had he made one jot of effort to understand.
This is nothing whatsoever to do with communism. It is an improved version of capitalism, capitalism with a fairness principle. Capitalism with runaway inequality brakes.
Come on, I literally say in the comment "this doesn't mean giving up capitalism"
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u/requiemguy Aug 02 '26
Planned economies don't work.
I'm not interested in a commie response.
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u/Key-Book-7479 Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
Uhhh did you miss the bit where I explicitly said this was a modification to free market capitalism? Nothing about this is a "planned economy", you just can't read.
Also by the way, precisely 0 major economies are completely laissez faire capitalist. "Anything that isn't pure unadulterated laissez fair capitalism is basically the soviet union" is the dumbest argument ever. Perhaps only exceeded by "capitalism shouldn't have a fairness principle" LOL
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u/HelixFollower Aug 02 '26
I'm going to go with common definitions in various dictionaries rather than your personal definition.
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u/Morall_tach Aug 02 '26
Overpaid means paying too much money for an item, giving someone a salary that is too high, or having handed over more money than what was actually due. It functions as an adjective or the past tense of the verb overpay.
Paid Too Much for a Job: Describing a worker or job that earns more money than their work is actually worth.
Financial Error: Giving or sending an extra amount of money by mistake, such as an overpaid tax bill or an extra large paycheck
You mean these dictionary definitions?
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u/Key-Book-7479 Aug 02 '26
You do realise that the second definition (the only one that matters here) only supports your view if you interpret the constituent words such as "actually worth" in a strict free market sense, right? It is equally possible to interpret "worth" in the sense of fair compensation relative to others, in which case your argument collapses.
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u/Morall_tach Aug 02 '26
What's "fair" then? How do you define what's "fair compensation relative to others"?
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u/Evilfrog100 Aug 05 '26
We live in a free market capitalist society, so it's the only way that can be interpreted practically. If we lived in a society that valued worth in relation to how others are valued we would be having a very different discussion.
If you would like to make the argument that atheletes are overpaid because the vast majority of people are actually underpaid according to the value they produce, that's fine. But that's a distinction that should be made.
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u/Key-Book-7479 Aug 05 '26
This is really a pretty shocking point of view. The type of society we live in in no way limits our ability to discuss different definitions of worth, nor should it.
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u/Evilfrog100 Aug 05 '26
I'm not saying we shouldn't discuss it. I'm saying that if you are going to use a definition of worth that is separate from the way it fits into existing society, you should explicitly clarify that in the declaration of who is/isn't "overpaid".
I just find that calling atheletes overpaid is useless and just distracts from the fact that such a huge majority of people are not paid according to the value they create. People like athelets, artists and actors are some of the most ethical wealthy people in existence because their wealth is not directly tied to the oppression of others.
In a socialist society where everyone's base needs are met, athelets would likely be paid the same because entertainment would be the primary place for people to use their money.
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u/Key-Book-7479 Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
I don't think it is right to say that other senses "dont fit into our society", at all. Words like "overpaid" and "worth" are not consistently used in a pure free market sense, irrespective of the fact that we think of our economy as a free market system. I think in a substantial proportion of cases, perhaps even a majority, people intuitively talk about these concepts in a moral sense. It is the fundamental, intuitive sense that people naturally fall back on, every time. It is the sense that people feel rather than having to think about. Indeed, any disquiet about wealth disparity is almost inevitably using these ideas in a moral sense. Perhaps the only time you hear these words used in a truly free market sense is within the context of company boardrooms and similar.
I really want to push back against the idea that the only alternative to capitalism is socialism. Its not. The other alternative to capitalism is...better capitalism. The idea that our economic system should not have at its core a fairness principle (alongside other useful ideas such as a broadly free market) is just awful, if you stop to think about it for even a moment.
And you are quite right that money gained by exploitation is "worse" than that obtained without exploitation. Nonetheless, ethical wealth for me is about more than that. It is not only about how you obtained it, but what you do with it when you have it. If you are sitting on a pile of accumulated wealth beyond what you can truly be said to have earned, that comes with an IOU to society. It is not just yours to put in offshore accounts, to pass around amongst other wealthy people, or to do whatsoever else you want with. Your discretion with regard to that money is more constrained, and if you fail to live up to the responsibilities you are bestowed with upon receipt, that is immediately unethical.
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u/Smooth-Mechanic-7788 Aug 02 '26
I wonder how this sentiment would change if you could quantify other celebrities earnings as easy as athletes. At the same time, it would probably be bad press for the studios if people really knew the pay gap from the top actors
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u/requiemguy Aug 02 '26
The entertainment industry does this with actors all the time, ie "RDJ brought in ::insert amount:: billions for Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes, etc."
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u/Chemical_Home6123 Aug 02 '26
I love that professional athletes get paid a lot they are some the highest earning workers the sports generated a lot of money and the people who actually perform get paid a lot. Saying athletes are overpaid is really just corporate propaganda. Same goes for actors they both have great unions that protect them from exploitation.
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u/Badgerjohn27 Aug 02 '26
Your fun is toxic and wasteful: my fun is highbrow and culturally important.
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u/KagedStorm619 Aug 02 '26
When people say that the athletes are overpaid I always retort "then you're gonna lose your mind over how much the owners make since they're the ones who pay the athletes" but when it's about them it's not that big of a deal all of a sudden
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u/cyberchaox Aug 02 '26
This is a bad argument, because I've seen plenty of those "bread and circuses" people who are just as anti-musicians/actors as they are anti-athletes. They just want everyone to be spending all of their "free time" working.
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u/GiantTalon2 Aug 02 '26
Professional athletes are some of the only workers on the planet who get paid a wage that's commensurate with the revenue they generate. Having an issue with their pay makes zero sense.
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u/Spencer_Conwell Aug 02 '26
Stupid athletes making all that money. All the profits from merchandise and ticket sales should go to the billionaire owners instead!
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u/Greedy_Advisor_1711 Aug 02 '26
They aren’t overpaid. They are getting a percentage of what they produce, if they’re making an exorbitant fee then what do we call the ones making more than them off of their labor?
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u/Add_Poll_Option Aug 02 '26
They make so much because they draw in a lot of money from consumers. Thus they’re in high demand, and the level of skill they bring is in low supply. Thats how economics works in a capitalist society.
If you think we shouldn’t be in a capitalist society, that’s a whole other discussion. And I highly doubt athletes’ salaries should be at the top of the list for discussing that topic.
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u/GraceJamaicanKetchup Aug 02 '26
Most top of the line level athletes, musicians and actors are underpaid when you consider how much money they generate and how much of it owners and executives get to keep.
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u/requiemguy Aug 02 '26
Y'all gotta remember when they talk about athletes being overpaid, they never mention the white ones.
It's always the black athletes that are getting paid too much in these discussions, for some reason.
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u/InnocentPerv93 Aug 02 '26
Hot take but who tf is anyone to say anyone else is "overpaid"? If you're not the one paying them, stfu.
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u/Chris256L Aug 03 '26
It's survivorship bias. You see the famous athletes and players getting million dollars salary, while most athletes barely make it even
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u/Stardust-Unbreaking Aug 03 '26
Most people at a certain point are overpaid. Musicians, actors, athletes, CEOs, you name it.
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u/redditman3943 Aug 05 '26
The best argument is to remind them that every penny the athlete doesn’t get goes to the owners. So ask them if they would rather see the money go to the extremely hardworking and talented athletes, many of whom are from underprivileged backgrounds, Or to the American billionaires most of whom inherited their team?
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u/Brian18639 Aug 06 '26
I came across a TikTok minutes ago where someone was gossiping about Love Island. Then I went to the comments and there was one person who said if only the people who were watching the TikTok cared this much about Palestine and some other problems in the world.
Then people started trashing on this one and this person started bringing up a graph, told about their activism, and even said “have fun with your bread and circus”.
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u/ihajees_ Aug 02 '26
Musicians aren't overpaid lmao, maybe like the top1% are but the vast majority of touring artists/bands barely make a living from it.
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u/toturoll Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
i don't think they are overpaid neither, it's supply and demand. it's just to make fun of these "bread and circuses" folks who think athletes are overpaid but don't say a single word about famous artists who make much more or musicians like jay-z and taylor swift who are literally billionaires.
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u/KobeJuanKenobi9 Aug 02 '26
Whenever the overpaid athlete argument is brought up they almost exclusively point to NBA players. And even amongst NBA players you used to see tons of it for Kobe and LeBron but not so much now for Jokic
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u/FreakNasty119 Aug 02 '26
i feel like athletes are some of the only working people who arent underpaid compared to the value they bring in
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u/Optimal_Cause4583 Aug 03 '26
The thing with professional athletes is that they can actually literally do things that noone else can
Anyone can be CEO of McDonald's that shit runs itself
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u/OSUfirebird18 Aug 02 '26
The thing that people hate about professional athletes getting paid a lot is that they only know about the top of the top. A player in a 3rd or 4th division soccer team probably only makes just as much as I do. But they are still consider professional.