2009 Salaries
Today your installment of sports business porn is supplied by Maury Brown, who has gathered all of the salary info for 2009. Included is average salary per League and division, some top 10 lists, etc.
Insert your “but they’re playing a game” complaint in the comments.
That is a lot of money just for playing a game
Considering they’re just playing a game, that is a lot of money.
Won’t someone please think of the CHILDREN?!?
My back-of-the-envelope calculations show player salaries (roughly 2.7 billion according to the link) as around 41% of (publicly claimed) revenues (widely reported as 6.5 billion for 2008).
Last year players received roughly 50% of revenues in the NFL and 57% in the NBA, according to their respective players’ association web sites.
Did you add in the value of their included health coverage and free travel?
No…I couldn’t easily get that data. Looking a little harder, it appears that benefits are included in the NBA number, but the NFL ratio goes up to 58% if you include benefits.
Best estimates for MLB appear to be 51-55% for the last few years, and probably lower this year with revenue increasing year-over-year roughly four times faster than salaries.