[mattyb]

Looks like European sports teams have finally caught up with US sports teams in terms of salaries paid to players. I actually thought that 'we' were still quite fair behind the salaries of US sports stars.

Revealed: Manchester City pay players more than any team in world - Premier League - Football - The Independent

Of course this doesn't take into account sponsorships or endorsements, in which I'm quite sure the US stars are leagues ahead of Euro stars.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

I think you've likely just been mistaken. As far as I am aware, soccer stars have always been paid as much or more as their NA counterparts in other sports.

Note that you're using "European sports teams" to exclusively mean "soccer/football sports teams". Also, a lot of this is a function of the rules of the sport - baseball is the only NA sport without a serious salary cap, and thus has the highest salaries of the North American sports. Each of football, basketball and hockey players would make less salary overall, because the sports have salary caps that limit the size of individual salaries and/or total team salary, which is meant to limit what you see in baseball and soccer - ultra-rich owners consistently buying their way to success. Whether that's an effective strategy or not is another discussion, but what is not debateable is that your European transfer "rules" are a straight crock of total horseshit.

[mattyb]

Besides Messi, Beckham and Ronaldo, you don't see any other Euro team-based sports players on the Forbes lists for highest paid sports stars before #61 Wayne Rooney. Lots and lots of baseball and American football and basketball players.

Originally Posted by ShortcutToMoncton 

but what is not debateable is that your European transfer "rules" are a straight crock of total horseshit.

You'll have to go into detail here.

===

I was looking for more info about highly paid sports stars and found this :

How Michael Jordan Still Earns $80 Million A Year - Forbes

INCREDIBLE !!!!

[ShortcutToMoncton]

You're also talking about two things: salary (which is the link in your original post), and endorsements.

LeBron James, for example, does not get a monster annual paycheck from the Miami Heat. Very few basketball players make over $20 million. (I forgot to mention about NFL players though - there is a cap, but that does not stop quarterbacks from making an insane amount of money on some of these recent deals. I would suspect these QBs probably get the highest salaries in team sports.)

Either way, the large Euro soccer teams have always been very comparable to the four major NA sport leagues as far as I know.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Holy, just looked up annual salaries.....elite NFL QBs make the most by an insanely large margin. I had no idea there were QBs making 30 to 40-odd million dollars a year?!?

The NFL is just filthy rich.

[Shaddim]

I don't begrudge them a penny of it, their careers are relatively short (5-10 years) and they deal with great physical pain for the rest of their (oftentimes much shorter) lives.

[OAW]

^^^^

This. And beyond that, people always want to question what players make ... but are deafeningly silent on what the owners make. I think it comes down to people comparing their own personal salary to the salary of someone "playing a game". But that is entirely the wrong way to look at it. It's not about a star athlete's salary in comparison to other professions. It's about his salary in comparison to the value he brings to the enterprise. A professional sports team can generate hundreds of millions in revenue. So the proper comparison of a player's salary should be to that figure. Because at the end of the day, it's the players that put butts in seats.

OAW

[P]

On transfer rules... It used to be that you had to pay a transfer fee for any player that moved teams, or the player had to take a one year pause. This was stopped by the EU after some teams abused the rules - now you only have to pay if there is a valid contract (ie, a player can be a free agent when the contract is up). In combination with this FIFA has rules about how young players may be signed - I think it's 16. There is no draft for new players, there is no trading without player approval, and the transfer windows are quite short.

All in all this means that a small number of well known teams can attract the best talent from around the globe, creating tiers inside each league, with the same 2-3 teams winning every year. In short it makes the sport less interesting.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Yep...the major European soccer leagues are really a race to the bottom of the deepest pockets available, for the most part.