Sports prize money/earnings are crazy.

[Dave7]

Not crazy at all. They earn the money by generating the funds for their employers.

Maybe. But eg darts, snooker, major golf comps have massive following.
Conversely, I have played and followed tv golf for many years bit I have never heard of the golfers in that seniors comp......yet yhe winner got £425K.

 

[Beebo]

I didn't know that!!
Every day's a school day

Footballers all get paid a fortune, so representing their country is seen as a privilege. For information, Dean Henderson the 2nd choice goalkeeper gets paid £100k a week by his club.
Rugby and cricket is not very well paid at club level in comparisons, so international players do get paid for playing, many even have central contracts.
In golfs Ryder Cup the European players don’t get paid and historically have a much better time of it than the USA team who do get paid.

 

[Drago]

Dave inadvertently highlights an injustice in our society, where the most valuable workers, the carers, the health care assistants, etc, get paid pittance, while professional drink drivers, thugs and assorted criminals footballers get paid unbelievable sums for pretending to be hurt. Society's priorities really are ass-backwards. Of course doing something about it involves the forbidden P word, so I can do no more than draw attention to the phenomenon.

 

[Andy in Germany]

it’s just market forces.
Why do rugby and cricketers get paid comparatively little?
Athletes get hardly anything.
It’s the fans who pay the prize money. No fans, no prize money.

I think that's the point: the organisations behind sports know they can make a huge amount of money because enough fans agree to pay the entry ticket and subscriptions. Apparently this applies to senior golf players as well. I don't get it, but I don't understand why anyone would pay to watch people kick a bag of wind about.

Personally, I'd expect you to pay me 45k to spend a couple of hours of my weekend watching football.

 

[Dorset Boy]

And don't forget the shirt sales in football - that's a massive revenue generator with the far eastern market.

 

[AndyRM]

Maybe. But eg darts, snooker, major golf comps have massive following.
Conversely, I have played and followed tv golf for many years bit I have never heard of the golfers in that seniors comp......yet yhe winner got £425K.

Compared to football the following of other sports is miniscule.

 

[bikingdad90]

And don’t forget about the personal sponsorship that the sports person will be attracting. Lots of footballers get paid to wear a certain brand of boot, glove, those silly little bra things or drive a certain brand of car.

 

[AndyRM]

And don’t forget about the personal sponsorship that the sports person will be attracting. Lots of footballers get paid to wear a certain brand of boot, glove, those silly little bra things or drive a certain brand of car.

Those "silly little bra things" are part of the kit. It's basically the footballing equivalent of a power metre. They get used in rugby too.

We've got quite a good set up with them at Killie - it's a collaboration between us and local uni's and colleges' sports science department; we share the cost of the kit and they're allowed to use our metrics as real world examples to study.

 

[Electric_Andy]

On the face of it, i.e. remuneration for the hours of practice, effort and performance put in, it is not fair. I think this sort of proves that a professional sportsperson is not being paid for their performance, but rather how entertaining their sport is.

A snooker player for example, practices for 30-40 hours a week, which roughly equates to a full time job. They only get big bucks (bonuses per se) if they win tournaments. Compare that to a non-professional i.e. marathon runner, they get much less for greater effort

 

[DCLane]

At the top end income's huge, but drop down just a little bit it's hardly anything at all. Once below Pro Conti in cycling it's down to the UCI minimum if paid.

Mind you, I won £5 for coming 3rd in the 'steel bike' category of a time trial this year. Maybe I've a future after all

 

[Sharky]

I won £3, for 1st handicap in the Saxon RC 50, in 1967.

And I think I had to provide receipts to the value of £3, to claim the prize. It was strictly amateur stuff in those days.

I was quite pleased with that £3 prize. To put it in perspective, I was still at school in 1967. The following year, I got my first job, at £561 per year, equating to about £10 a week. So a reasonable amount. It was one of a tiny handful of random prizes, over the following 60 years.

 

[Drago]

Isn't the whole point of sport to be sporting? Surely the pride and recognition that comes with standing on the podium and wearing a medal the whole point?

Sadly I struggle to unsee the business aspect, which is likely why I have little interest in high level professional sport, but will happily ride my bike 20 miles to watch the local amateur rugby boys give their rivals a good slapping.

 

[Vapin' Joe]

Isn't the whole point of sport to be sporting? Surely the pride and recognition that comes with standing on the podium and wearing a medal the whole point?

Sadly I struggle to unsee the business aspect, which is likely why I have little interest in high level professional sport, but will happily ride my bike 20 miles to watch the local amateur rugby boys give their rivals a good slapping.

If the sport is your full time job you can't live unless someone pays you to do it.

How come nobody complains when some drug taking alcoholic rock star who's been banging underage girls manages to salt away multi million pound fortunes?

 

[AndyRM]

If the sport is your full time job you can't live unless someone pays you to do it.

How come nobody complains when some drug taking alcoholic rock star who's been banging underage girls manages to salt away multi million pound fortunes?

Come on, you should know by now that football is a stupidly easy target, with some valid reasons, others less so.

 

[matticus]

On the face of it, i.e. remuneration for the hours of practice, effort and performance put in, it is not fair. I think this sort of proves that a professional sportsperson is not being paid for their performance, but rather how entertaining their sport is.

Actually I think it's a weird hybrid of the two:
- yes, there will only be big money if the entertainment value is there. But ..
- the better you are at the sport, the more you will be paid. So generally practice/effort is rewarded!