Topic: Are Professional Footballers paid too much?

[M(oaning) B(ecomes) E(mbarrassing)]

Listen wanker...

Both my parents are GP's, my uncle is a maxillofacial surgeon and a handful of my my mates work in the NHS.

I was speaking in average terms of salary 

I seriously doubt that two GPs (as you claim) would send their offspring to a school where his mother tonge was taught so poorly.  And if, as you claim, your uncle is a maxilofacial surgeon, you should know (seeing as your parents are GPs) that he earns less than them.  That's assuming he and they tell you details of their salaries of course.  And if you're talking in average terms of salary, as you claim, why base your arguments on what the top players are earning as though they all are?  And lastly, "wanker"?  Resporting to personal abuse means you've lost not only the argument, but any respect. 

[vicgill]

Too much money to the point of obscenity, I agree that they should be paid well but a kings ransom every week even for average players is bollocks.

and mostly ignorant

[Cusamano]

  And if, as you claim, your uncle is a maxilofacial surgeon, you should know (seeing as your parents are GPs) that he earns less than them. 

WTF?

You haven't got the slightest clue have you?

That's assuming he and they tell you details of their salaries of course.  And if you're talking in average terms of salary, as you claim, why base your arguments on what the top players are earning as though they all are?  And lastly, "wanker"?  Resporting to personal abuse means you've lost not only the argument, but any respect. 

Respect? Priceless coming from yourself.

I know the exact earnings of both my parents and I also know for a fact that my uncle earns more then both of them.

Why not base my arguments on average salaries? What exactly do you want me to base it on?

[jambutty]

Fishing, surely?

Nope.  I'm talking about the work they have to do long before they reach the top level.

[BIGdavalad]

Nope.  I'm talking about the work they have to do long before they reach the top level.

What on earth does any professional footballer do that qualifies as work? Even before they hit the big time they do a couple of hours training a day and 180 minutes of their actual 'work' a week.

Even as YTS kids, you can hardly call having to polish a few boots and sort laundry out work, can you?

[davenorthwales]

what's the feeling now compared to then.. 

how would a wage compare to someone's pay for what they actually do and how much energy they use?  take for example. a factory worker on £9 an hour, but then again depends what they do.. i suppose someone can only try to compare based on their own experience.  one factory job maybe 70% heavy/walking/fetching/carrying and another 60%.  probably i know myself how much energy used on a football pitch and works out roughly up to twice as much energy used compared to my work then over 90 mins.. if a pro uses twenty times as much energy in one match, if someone gets paid £10 an hour, footballer works out £200 an hour..can't really compare it to a soft job, or taxi driver even if they work long hours or weekends.   then again, if someone is paid £1000 an hour, they get the same rate on treatment table or tactics discussion. if a player is training etc 30 hours a week plus match day.

say in 1981, a take home wage would have been around £45 - £50 which wouldn't have been too bad in those days mon-friday, not the best pay but could have been a bit worse at £35, and a player would have been on around £400, roughly ten times a pay which people didn't talk about or seemed to mind..

come 1990, a take home pay would have been around £110 and a player anything from 4k to 10k, so the ten times a wage theory has jumped to 40 times.

20k a week in year 2000 would have been around 100 times if someone's pay was £200
2010 50k a week and people wage would have been around £250, 200 times a pay.
2018 average prem league players wage seems to be around 60k a week, same thing if someone takes home £300 - £400

[CornerFlag]

Still makes me fucking sick to be honest.  Do I blame the players?  No, but that level of money a week for what they do bothers me a lot.

[WhereAngelsPlay]

The question should be are professional sports people paid too much.

[Something Worse]

Don't think of it as "are these idiots paid too much to kick a ball around" think of it as "are these idiots paid too much relative to the revenue kicking a ball around generates?".

The answer is clearly no IMO. In the NFL half the money in the league goes straight to the owners to do with that they please, would you rather that be the case?

With that said, it's clear that the sport is asking too much of the modern fan, and that some of these monster tv deals should be subsidizing ticket prices for the local fan. The Premier League should be making that a rule.

[Flaccido Dongingo]

I'm a IT/systems contractor and I earn about £50000 pa, and I live relatively comfortably, but if I was paid that amount every week (which is what some bang average players make) I honestly wouldn't know what to do with it, I don't know if it's policy, but surely membership of their union should include a mandatory weekly deduction to go towards grassroots football, and not into Gordon Taylors pocket.

If you have 5 minutes spare, go on to YouTube and watch a series HITC Sevens are doing at the moment, on the 7 best paid players in each position, and it's utterly jaw dropping, for instance, Lassana Diarra (remember him?) is on £270k pw, and Lavezzi (now playing in China) is on £427k pw, if that doesn't prove football is broken, I don't know what will.

[the_red_pill]

That's what the market determines. These are ordinary blokes who've done, and are doing well, and I certainly applaud anyone doing well in an honest way even if it seems too much. Good on them for their fortune. I'd like to see more of that everywhere else.

They are participating in a multi-billion dollar business and making lots of money for their billionaire owners so I think they deserve even more than they have now. Looking at the figures clubs bring in, I think they need to be paid even more.

The Football world is experiencing a golden era at the moment and they are lucky lads. While they're in it- in the middle of the stream catching the current, I say- "Go for it lad!"

Countries in Europe are raking in the tax money and all the other industries boosted by this flow of money- not to mention the money the players actually spend at Hotels, airlines, the local take away, the Deli, Doctors, pharmacies etc
The fact there are now agents who also get decent money is also a positive - more money to pump into economies for ordinary people to get better salaries.
It's good ALL ROUND. We need more of that.

[WhereAngelsPlay]

Speaking of youtube,there are youtubers who earn $200,000+ pw.

[FiSh77]

fuckin hell, a ten year old bump

yeah, they're overpaid, apart from sanchez, he's worth every penny united waste on him

[the_red_pill]

Speaking of youtube,there are youtubers who earn $200,000+ pw.

Great time to be alive, eh?
Money everywere- all you need is an idea and the will to make some money.

[Flaccido Dongingo]

Speaking of youtube,there are youtubers who earn $200,000+ pw.

That's people with millions of views for each video, very rare indeed.

[Lush is the best medicine...]

Still makes me fucking sick to be honest.  Do I blame the players?  No, but that level of money a week for what they do bothers me a lot.

thing for me is if they all took a 50% cut (or those on £500k+ a year) worldwide the owners wouldn’t charge less, sponsors wouldn’t pay less, merchandise deals and kit wouldn’t cost less and tv companies wouldn’t pay less for rights so it’d just be the owners creaming more and to be honest I’d rather the players got the money than the owners as they’re the ones who actually do the job, especially as due to the nature of the job one bad tackle can be the difference between securing your family for generations and having to go back to work

And of course we can throw in film stars, musicians who make insane money (one direction lads I think made £5m+ a year when they were around 20) but people seem to be fine with that, have my own reasons why like

[the_red_pill]

thing for me is if they all took a 50% cut (or those on £500k+ a year) worldwide the owners wouldn’t charge less, sponsors wouldn’t pay less, merchandise deals and kit wouldn’t cost less and tv companies wouldn’t pay less for rights so it’d just be the owners creaming more and to be honest I’d rather the players got the money than the owners as they’re the ones who actually do the job, especially as due to the nature of the job one bad tackle can be the difference between securing your family for generations and having to go back to work

And of course we can throw in film stars, musicians who make insane money (one direction lads I think made £5m+ a year when they were around 20) but people seem to be fine with that, have my own reasons why like

Well said mate. I agree.
I'd rather they get that money than it all flowing back to their owners. The market sets the salaries/influx of money and we are the market. If we're disgusted, we should take a good look at ourselves and curtail our spending on football. Nothing wrong in employing an agent to wrestle every penny from it, if you can.
In any case- they're fortunate. Wish this sort of thing happened more and in more industries.

[SamAteTheRedAcid]

So long as they're all paying the proper amount of tax, I don't have a problem with them being paid the market value fo the sport.

Some could argue that the people who pay the wages are fat off the backs of increased ticket prices and obscene TV deals, but I don't blame players for that.

[Alan_X]

The question should be are professional sports people paid too much.

Or are professional sports people, musicians, film stars, people with exceptional talents in other fields... paid too much?...

[CornerFlag]

thing for me is if they all took a 50% cut (or those on £500k+ a year) worldwide the owners wouldn’t charge less, sponsors wouldn’t pay less, merchandise deals and kit wouldn’t cost less and tv companies wouldn’t pay less for rights so it’d just be the owners creaming more and to be honest I’d rather the players got the money than the owners as they’re the ones who actually do the job

Oh I agree, which is why seeing the acceptance from some people here pretty much saddens me more.  As I said I don't blame the players but it's like there's a complete separation as to what's acceptable because it's sport.  Think of how people are fine seeing figures such as take-home pay of £2m a year, people that might earn £30k after tax if they're lucky.  Sums they're not going to earn in a lifetime earned in one year by someone playing football for a living, working 6 hours a day maybe.  I know there's a whole blindness when it comes to numbers that we kinda can't get our heads around but the level of money in the game is baffling and a big reason why I'm much more minded never to spend a penny to go watch the match or buy merchandise again unless it becomes worth my while.  And it just isn't.

Compare the attitudes to the original thread compared to now, people just accept it.  And that's as big a worry (to me) as to where the money goes.

[CHOPPER]

Or are professional sports people, musicians, film stars, people with exceptional talents in other fields... paid too much?...

Compared to NHS doctors, NHS nurses, Ambulance staff, fire bobbies, teachers who all have exceptional talents as well, I'd say yes.

[Crosby Nick]

Listen wanker...

Both my parents are GP's, my uncle is a maxillofacial surgeon and a handful of my my mates work in the NHS.

I was speaking in average terms of salary 

You don’t get many replies starting like that on RAWK anymore.

[thejbs]

The 'slice of the pie' argument is ridiculous. The cost of football is borne by fans who can barely afford it. In a just world the players and ceo would get paid less resulting in lower ticket prices and cheaper merch.

[The North Bank]

I think they're underpaid. Have you seen the price of some sports cars these days, a week's wages will hardly buy you the tyres. Breaks my heart what these hard working lads have to put up with. Plus they have to give up so much, some cant even party the night before a game, others have to train twice a day, by the time they get back to their mansion its past 2pm, modern day slavery im telling you.

And the English lads, every 4 years, have to give up their well earned summer holiday for a week's work in some 3rd world shit hole like Russia to work for FREE.
They are lucky though, some foreign players have to do it for a month, its brutal. Only the lads down the trenches in wars know whats it like.

[Lush is the best medicine...]

Well said mate. I agree.
I'd rather they get that money than it all flowing back to their owners. The market sets the salaries/influx of money and we are the market. If we're disgusted, we should take a good look at ourselves and curtail our spending on football. Nothing wrong in employing an agent to wrestle every penny from it, if you can.
In any case- they're fortunate. Wish this sort of thing happened more and in more industries.

its why whenever the younger people ask me for advice I was say to take total ownership of anything that they can or come up with something that’s very useful to the business that only they can really do, helps give you leverage when it comes to things like pay reviews and the like so you can get more

Compare the attitudes to the original thread compared to now, people just accept it.  And that's as big a worry (to me) as to where the money goes.

id say we accept it because it’s the least worst option, for me the biggest cost is tickets and I’d take them not raising them for the next 10 years right now (or at least below inflation) would be a big win for the fans as barring relegation or serious fan discontent where people don’t show up they aren’t going down anytime soon barring regulation

[Something Worse]

The 'slice of the pie' argument is ridiculous. The cost of football is borne by fans who can barely afford it. In a just world the players and ceo would get paid less resulting in lower ticket prices and cheaper merch.

I agree with you but the market is supporting itself, until that doesn't happen everything will inflate across the board.

[Alan_X]

Compared to NHS doctors, NHS nurses, Ambulance staff, fire bobbies, teachers who all have exceptional talents as well, I'd say yes.

Absolutely. In terms of wage differential no one needs to be paid a thousand times more than the lowest paid. But it's a straw man argument. Paying a few hundred sportsmen less won't solve the problem of low pay in the health service, the fire service and other public services. That requires a commitment to progressive taxation and a well-funded welfare state.

[Billy The Kid]

I don't really have a problem with how much they earn. Good luck to them on that front. That being said though, I definitely don't feel the same way about professional football as I used to. I feel kind of disconnected from it these days. It doesn't mean as much to me as it did 10+ years ago

Some of these guys earn more in a month than the average working class person earns in a lifetime. And so I could be arsed giving too much of a fuck about it anymore, if that makes sense? I still love watching and supporting Liverpool like, but I wont be crying in my pint if Madrid beat us next week either

[davidlpool1982]

They probably are, but all you see is what happens on the pitch and what you think happens on the training pitch. That whole kicking a ball around and training line is not even 10% of what you see.

Think how many thousand of kids every year, at clubs all over the world try an make it as a footballer. Think of all the hours of training, the missing doing normal shit with your mates after school because you have to train or travel to a match. A lot of them either convince themselves or train so hard they think they'll make it, so a lot of them don't do as well at school because of the lifestyle. Then they get dumped. Told you aren't good enough, sorry. They have nothing to fall back on, no plan B. How many times do you read about people who have gone off the rails who were talented footballers as kids?

To make it to the very top there are years and years of sacrifices that we take for granted. You can't have a night out without being interrupted all night. No swift pint after work. It may make it easier to meet women (probably way out your league too), but you hardly see them. Travel to away games, internationals, training camps etc. You and your kids sacrifice those special moments like first words or school plays because you are in the arse end of nowhere for a World Cup qualifier against a bunch of part timers. You can't drink excessively (if at all), you have to have specific diets etc. It's also a short career, maybe 15 years. Then what are you qualified for? What do you do with your life to fill the void left by football? You may have money, but that can make it worse. Keith Gillespie had loads of money but also tons of free time after football so filled it with Gambling. Just because you are rich doesn't make societal or mental issues go away, it changes the dynamic obviously, but they still exist. With some of the players from poorer countries they essentially have to bankroll all their friends and family too, hence some of the huge entourages that appear. Not because they probably want to, but because it's the only way to keep them in a somewhat comfortable life.

So yeah, I'd say they deserve what they can get. For the most part they are a bunch of working class kids who did good, sacrificed huge chunks of childhood and as adults sacrifice even more things we take for granted and for which there is a small window of time to make money to set themselves and their families up for life. In a world where Jeff Bezos makes billions exploiting working class people to work for minimum wage and forcing them to piss in bottles, it's good to see some of them take their slice of a very lucrative pie. Wages are a cost of doing business and the Premier League does very fucking good business based on the talents and sacrifices of those 20 squads of players.

[cdav]

Unlike a lot of other highly paid professions they are paid via PAYE and pay the correct amount of tax (on their salaries, maybe not so much on image rights, etc).

I'd guess that its worth over £2bn in taxes to the Uk government and that's before added benefits throught tourism, jobs in deprived areas and local community schemes. So no real issue with their pay- I'd probably look at other well paid professions to see if they make such a contribution to society.

[davenorthwales]

if nurses were paid £10,000 a week, where would all the money come from. if a brickie and a carpenter was paid 10k a week, it'll cost more of a fortune to build a house. doubt if they'll get 10k a week working at tesco or asda shopfloor, food will go up a lot to pay for it.

if my manager offered me 10k a week for doing the work i was doing, i'd look daft at him.. ordinary business doesn't have the means to pay that kind of money to all the staff, be lucky to get a £5 a week pay rise each year.. the question would be, would i take it.

if players weren't paid so much, there wouldn't be a need as such to use the tv money to subsidize ticket prices.they'd naturally fall a little and the tv package would be a bit cheaper

 

[davenorthwales]

i'm confident they would make a contribution to society even if they were paid 20k a week, they'd still be getting the tourists in either way.  if i remember right, around 1999, tony blair said he wants a footballer's wage economy.. i hope he pays his cleaner 10k a week if leading by example.. doubt if he had that spare a week, his annual pay would have been about 30k

[elsewhere]

I will say Sanchez is definitely getting paid too much

[Lush is the best medicine...]

I will say Sanchez is definitely getting paid too much

id say he is paid nowhere near enough for all the comedy he has proved the football world the last few months

[Something Worse]

if nurses were paid £10,000 a week, where would all the money come from. if a brickie and a carpenter was paid 10k a week, it'll cost more of a fortune to build a house. doubt if they'll get 10k a week working at tesco or asda shopfloor, food will go up a lot to pay for it.

if my manager offered me 10k a week for doing the work i was doing, i'd look daft at him.. ordinary business doesn't have the means to pay that kind of money to all the staff, be lucky to get a £5 a week pay rise each year.. the question would be, would i take it.

if players weren't paid so much, there wouldn't be a need as such to use the tv money to subsidize ticket prices.they'd naturally fall a little and the tv package would be a bit cheaper

You're looking at it the wrong way, the growth of the sport is what has grown the wages. The wage growth hasn't made the game bigger.

[davenorthwales]

ticket prices don't cover enough, the rest is topped up by the tv deal// probably i mentioned this before a while back, in 1980, standing on the kop would have been £1.25, can't quite remember a seat price, possibly around £2.50 and if a take home wage was £50, either looking at 5% of a wage or 2.5% versus players wage of £200, £300, £400

mid 90s, 1996 would have been £17 a seat compared to £150 pay, players wages jumped to £10,000

in a way, if someone took home £480 now, that balances it out a little % wise.. otherwise if anyone takes home £340 or less with a car, they would be quite stuffed. the inbetweens would have to save up quite a long time for one match   

[Sheer Magnetism]

The problem isn't that they're paid too much - they get a fair sized slice of the pie - it's that they aren't taxed enough. But that goes for everyone that earns seven figures or more a year. The issue is that footballers get compared to ordinary workers when they should be compared to other top level entertainers or people earning similar salaries, in which case I'd argue they completely deserve what they get.

[B0151?]

if nurses were paid £10,000 a week, where would all the money come from. if a brickie and a carpenter was paid 10k a week, it'll cost more of a fortune to build a house. doubt if they'll get 10k a week working at tesco or asda shopfloor, food will go up a lot to pay for it.

if my manager offered me 10k a week for doing the work i was doing, i'd look daft at him.. ordinary business doesn't have the means to pay that kind of money to all the staff, be lucky to get a £5 a week pay rise each year.. the question would be, would i take it.

if players weren't paid so much, there wouldn't be a need as such to use the tv money to subsidize ticket prices.they'd naturally fall a little and the tv package would be a bit cheaper

It would be nice to think that if players weren't paid as much then the money would go into making football more affordable but I don't think that's how it would go, that's not how capitalism works. They would still try to rinse football for as much as they could, only difference is that money would go into the hands of the few already rich tax=dodging businessmen that own football clubs, and less would see its way back into our society through the taxes and all the shite mass consuming footballers buy.

[Lush is the best medicine...]

The problem isn't that they're paid too much - they get a fair sized slice of the pie - it's that they aren't taxed enough. But that goes for everyone that earns seven figures or more a year. The issue is that footballers get compared to ordinary workers when they should be compared to other top level entertainers or people earning similar salaries, in which case I'd argue they completely deserve what they get.

how much should they be taxed, we had ridiculously high taxes in the 70s and a lot of the rich left (and many never came back),likes of Bowie went to Switzerland so jacking up taxes won’t necessarily lead to more tax revenue, I mean if taxes went from 50% to 70% for the top earners (like PL footballers) would you want to stick around? Plus I think that happened in France a few years ago and was a total disaster

[capt k]

if 3% of Players wages went to fund food banks, there would be alot less starving