LeBron James had the nation’s attention for a full hour this week with his announcement that he will be joining the Miami Heat next season. (Whether an hour of prime time was meritted, we won’t judge.) The bottom line: Over the next five years, James will reportedly earn around $100 million — and that’s just on the payroll. Endorsements are extra. Not to mention income from investments and other business ventures. You get the picture – and it’s got a lot of zeroes.
As talk has zeroed in on the NBA star’s compensation these days, though, it’s worth taking a look at James’ peers: professional athletes in the soccer, hockey, football and baseball leagues. Few surprises there, it turns out: it pays to be a basketball or baseball star; soccer… not so much. Even though the U.S. national soccer team was the center of attention until a couple of weeks ago and, in general, the popularity of soccer has been on the rise in recent years, professional soccer players on average still earn just a fraction of the salaries of other professional athletes. The average MLS player, in fact, pulls in the equivalent pay of a nice desk job.
In this infographic, we compare the salaries of the top-paid baseball, basketball, football, soccer and hockey players, take a look at salary caps and give you the average compensation for a professional in each of these sports.
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15 Comments so far
leave a commentThe “infographic” you mention will not appear on my screen, so I don’t know what is there, but I’m not sure why you even bother citing MLS in the text above. MLS is to soccer what rookie league minor league baseball or (and this is probably being overly generous) the NBA Development League is to pro baseball and basketball respectively. MLS is arguably not one of the worlds top 20 soccer leagues in terms of quality of play, and is certainly not one of the top 20 soccer leagues in the world in terms of salaries. Moreover, your reference to the World Cup has little relevance to MLS, given that only 4 of the 23 players representing the US play in MLS.
Even if you add the top 4 soccer leagues in the world (generally, but not universally, considered to be the English, Spanish, Italian and German leagues) there are too many variables for useful comparison. The top soccer teams have literally DOZENS of players on their payrolls. NBA teams have, what, 12-15?
And more important that that, since there is no single, NBA-style, soccer “super league” (a league that indisputably pulls in 90% or more of the world’s best players) the money involved in soccer globally is always going to be spread out over far far more teams and leagues.
And in all US sports leagues, the money runs out as soon as you get to what is regarded as the “minor leagues”. Players at these levels struggle just to get by, while in the top soccer countries, players at the equivalent level (second and third division soccer clubs) still pull in 6 figure, and sometimes even 7 figure, annual salaries.
The result – Lebron will likely continue to get more money than the top 4-5 soccer players, but minor league US athletes in all US sports could be hired on as house cleaners by their minor league equivalent European soccer players.
So….different interpretations depending on the different perspectives one takes.
I can see the infographic now, and see it is only about MLS. Again, I fail to see how MLS is a relevant comparison to what are the undisputed top basketball, baseball, football, and hockey leagues in the world. Even within the US MLS is, by many indicators, the third most popular soccer league behind the Mexican League and the English Premiership. As such, I don’t really understand what the comparison is suppose to tell us, and why MLS (much less “soccer” in general) is the focus of the text above.
And again, the US national team was the focus of much media attention recently yes. But very few of those players play in MLS, precisely because MLS cannot afford them. (The Landon Donovan exception notwithstanding)
Everyone please read what Wendell Gee had to say. Adding MLS next to NBA, NFL, and NBA for salary comparison is ridiculous. It is like comparing graduating rates of my local kindergarden and Harvard: makes no sense.
You should compare top leagues of each sport instead and bring in English Premier League and/or Spanish for comparisons.
Why not just publish a list of top 200 athletes, their salaries and their sport…include PGA, Nascar, Formula 1 and any other sport that might make the list.
You should compare these sports to international soccer players salaries. I don’t know the highest paid soccer player but Lionel Messi for Argentina makes 32 million Euros a year! That’s 41 million USD a year!
Even still, there is no market for soccer. No advertising because nobody is watching or going to games. How many cities in the US have dedicated soccer stadiums?? My guess is zero. I realize soccer is bigger in other markets, but you need the US involved if you want the big cash.
Without any revenue, how are they supposed to match the high salaries?
Not exactly. Attendance to MLS matches averages just a few hundred below the NHL and NBA with over 16,300 per game compared to around 17,000 respectively. With it’s current rate of growth it could theoretically surpass both leagues in attendance in just a couple of years! In Seattle matches for their MLS team, the Sounders, actually average a few thousand higher than for the Mariners and have since their founding. As far as the stadiums, 10 of the 16 MLS teams currently play in soccer-specific stadiums with two more being built in Kansas City and Houston and scheduled to open in 2011.
except for football players in europe
they earn up to a hundred million
Kelvin Hayden doesn’t make 17 mil a year. His deal is 43mil over 5 years, It could be a heavily back-loaded contract, where in the fifth year he would make that much, but the Colts would cut him or renegotiate before ever paying that.
Jermaine O’Neal isnt earning that much from the celtics- he had his older deal bought out, and the celtics are giving him the mid-level exception, around $6M. So essentially his figure is a combination of 2 salaries.
The soccer ignorance is awesome by some here.
There are several soccer specific stadiums that have capacity of about 25k.
MLS is not top quality, but is easily top 20. Indeed, 2nd tier, but it’s not as bad as you think. Top MLS players often easily mesh into top leagues if the team is a right fit.
And yes, the salaries are low, but they rise every year. Contracts will start getting larger once the league is more established (financially) and there is bigger incentive for ownership to spend more money (TO MAKE MORE MONEY). MLS is here to stay because of a conservative, long-term approach business model, unlinke NASL.
I think knowing the median value of salaries (in addition to the mean) would be more meaningful in these cases. I think the outliers (i.e. very highly compensated players) skew the results because of the minimum salaries imposed by the unions and contracts keep the mean artificially high. I believe significantly more than 50% of NFL players make less than $990,000 per year.
$148K is not simply the wages of a ‘good desk job’, as most highly educated professionals even in mid-career do not make $148K …. This is the wage of very few ‘excellent’ jobs in the private / public sectors, industry or non-profit. A pro-soccer player lives a very nice, affluent life on this salary and still makes more than most of us have made to-date .. even for a relatively short athletic career. Now we simply hope for any job in the US.
First point is that the MLS has only been around for 14 years (since 1996) so it take time to grow and catch the “Top Three”. Second, the league has only 384 players so if you were to look at them simply as a company providing jobs in the U.S. and the avg. salary of the employees (384) is $148k that is pretty good.
Actually there are currently 5 players in the MLS making more than $1M (Beckham, Donovan, Ljungberg, deGuzman) and another 9 players that make $300k or better. No match for the top European leagues but it has definetely come up over the last 5 years and with big name sponsors like VW, XBOX, RedBull, BestBuy, Amway, Herbalife, and Glidden contributing a combined $28M in shirt sponsorship alone. Not to mention the stadium deals that surely bring in just as much if not more that the shirt deals.
Add to that the rule changes now allowing each team 2-3 Designated Players and it looks like the MLS is positioning itself to start to keep its own talent and bring in outside players with the power to draw on TV and at the ticket booth.
Give it some time and support and remember salaries are directly related to revenue.
Soccer is my favorite sport
Sorry for maybe off comment but some more history:
The modern rules of football are based on the mid-19th century efforts to standardise the widely varying forms of football played at the public schools of England.
The Cambridge Rules, first drawn up at Cambridge University in 1848, were particularly influential in the development of subsequent codes, including association
football. The Cambridge Rules were written at Trinity College, Cambridge, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and
Shrewsbury schools. They were not universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs unconnected to schools or universities were formed throughout the
English-speaking world, to play various forms of football. Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club,
formed by former public school pupils in 1857, which led to formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, John Charles
Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules
Historian man