Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Paper 4
Paper 4
Alejo García
Emily Litle
ENG 121001
04/24/2022
In recent years, the strong growth of the sports market worldwide has been
highlighted, which has generated a greater participation in sports. This industry that goes
beyond what is seen on television and social media, has become a phenomenon of global
growth. For their part, professional athletes are the ones who have managed to propagate a
positive trend socially intertwined with the development and wide spread of athletes around
the world. Much controversy has been arising for a long time regarding what athletes earn
monetarily, and if they are being paid more than they should. So, it is necessary to ask
ourselves the following question: Are the salaries of professional athletes fair? There are
many things that must be taken into account regarding professional athletes since it is
important to note that they do not lead a very easy life like the one shown in social media.
The reality is that yes, sport catches their attention and they are passionate about it, but their
career goes beyond that. These athletes set themselves increasingly complicated goals, in
addition to training very often, and also stand out a lot in the skills of the sport they play.
Professional athletes are paid fairly because they receive back the money they are producing.
Making it clear that the career of athletes is also based on effort and dedication, we
can delve into why the debate arises. For many years, the idea has been that athletes are paid
more than they should, and to this is added the comments that employees from different work
areas are paid poorly. However, it is important to highlight why these comments arise.
Although it is true that an athlete does not study the same as a surgeon, a bricklayer, a sailor,
among others, these people also make a great effort to maintain physical health, sports
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qualities, contracts, and many other things. Another of the great reasons why there is so much
controversy is because these characters do not save lives, much less rule a country. However,
studies have shown that "In 2019, the average annual income for a US household was
$96,955 while the average income of a professional baseball player in the major leagues was
around $4.7 million" (Piccioto 6) which has shocked many people worldwide for obvious
reasons. In today's society, it is said that one should be paid according to the economic
importance of the work and its value to the community, which is why it could be argued that
professional athletes earn too much money if salaries are based on the value of their work,
since teaching is one of the most important occupations because the country’s economy
depends on how well educated the new generations are, and yet teachers are paid far less than
If we go into the matter, it is necessary to highlight who are the highest paid athletes
in the world and among them are Michael Jordan with a profit of around $2.62 billion, Tiger
Woods with $2.1 billion, Cristiano Ronaldo with $1.24 billion, Alex Rodriguez with $650
million (Booth) among many others, who without practicing the same sport manage to be part
of the most named athletes globally; which is a very important topic in order to understand
this situation since people tend to wrongly generalize the athlete's salary without taking into
account that athletes who are just beginning their sports career live a completely different
story
First, as we have already seen, there is an indication that the earnings of the
aforementioned athletes have to do with the public demand for the sport in which they are
involved; since the more athletes concentrate on becoming professionals, the more interest is
achieved on the part of the public, which generates more fans, the increase in profits by the
sports associations and therefore, greater income is produced for the athletes themselves. It
should be noted that the increase in the income of sports associations not only favors those
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who already work in them, but also new recruited athletes, and the creation of more jobs to be
able to supply and satisfy the needs of the directives and their members. As an example, we
can talk about the soccer club Real Madrid which is one of the biggest in the soccer industry.
Another aspect to take into account is that by saying that all athletes generate
exorbitant income, we are generalizing the salary of all professional athletes, which is not
good since those who earn enormous amounts of money are those athletes known worldwide
such as Mike Tyson, Nolan Arenado, Novak Djokovic since these characters are blockbusters
and have a long history in the field of sport. However, little is said about professional athletes
who are just making themselves known or who have little playing time, such as the tennist
David Nicholas Lonel whose salary is around $16,366 (“Nicholas David Ionel”). These types
of generalization do not benefit the new professional athletes since they actually do not earn
Last but not least, it must be emphasized that the career of an athlete is not the same
as that of any other professional such as a lawyer, bricklayer, among others. since they can
play professionally up to a certain age; for example, the estimated average career for NFL
players is 3 years, soccer players 8 years, NHL 5-12 years; however these are not certain. In
addition, there is the possibility that they face an injury that ends their career as an athlete, as
happened to Alvaro Benito, a former soccer player who "spent seven years as a player with
Real Madrid before an injury forced him to retire at the age of 26" (Hodson 1); and also Earl
Campbell, an NFL player who "was diagnosed with a spinal condition where doctors said it's
a miracle he was never paralyzed during his playing days" (Dalton 2). Following with the
idea of injuries in the industry, imagine that a certain athlete dedicated their life to training
and maintaining his physical quality instead of studying anything else, for obvious reasons
that athlete is not eligible to continue playing, for thus losing the only activity of their
economic income. In general, athletes are known for their short stay in the sports industry due
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to external conditions which gives us a good explanation of why the salaries of these athletes
are so elevated.
Concerns about athletes' salaries have always existed, but so have other professions as
actors, musicians, and so on. They do not only think of their careers as a hobby, they do it
because they are passionate about it and because they want to entertain the public. These
professional figures give a lot to society such as entertainment, faith and illusion in such a
Works Cited
Dalton, Kyle. “How the Legendary Earl Campbell Narrowly Dodged Paralysis in His
earl-campbell-narrowly-dodged-paralysis-in-his-career/.
all-time-michael-jordan-leads-star-studded-top-25-list/111wewzd2j0gq1a5hddn1cqgkx.
https://www.coachesvoice.com/cv/alvaro-benito-real-madrid/#:~:text=Alvaro%20Benito
%20spent%20seven%20years,at%20the%20age%20of%2026.
Muhammad Abdullah Idrees, et al. “Sports Tourism and Its Impact on Economic
“Nicholas David Ionel - Net Worth, Age, Height, Bio, Birthday, Wiki!” All Famous
Piccioto, Elad De. “Do Professional Athletes Deserve Their Inflated Salaries?”
https://www.theperspective.com/debates/sports/professional-athletes-deserve-inflated-
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salaries/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20the%20average%20annual,a%20serious%20threat
%20to%20sports.