When Did Athletes Start Getting Rich?
Even in today's dollars, Babe Ruth wouldn't have been rolling in dough like so many athletes today. The multi-million dollar sports deals are a phenomenon of our time. Interesting read for any sports enthusiasts out there.
http://www.firmex.com/blog/when-did-athletes-start-getting-rich/
When free agency started.
If only it included off the field money what would the numbers really look like...
Babe Ruth may not have been quite millionaire status in his day, but he would've been considered very well off. In the 70s Walt Frazier was making around 200k, which is probably close to a milly today. Also, different times have different standards of rich.
I'd say probably the 70s was when they started gettin rich, late 80s-early 90s came the ultra rich (see: MJ).
for baseball, when the reserve clause was abolished players started getting paid more (1975), before that there was an oligopoly amongst the owners who would collude and essentially fix wages because the players couldn't move on their own. not sure about other sports, but I don't really give a crap, it's entertaining and most of the big names are charitable to some extent. very few people can hurl a football 70 yards serve a tennis ball >120 mph, hit a drive >300yds, dunk a basketball, or hit a 95mph fastball, which is why they get paid so much, they have a skill. if everyone could do it, it wouldn't be special, so we pay to see that.
The contracts really started getting out of control in the mid to late 1990s along with the equity and real estate markets.
2nd Century AD, arguably the best paid athlete of all time raced chariots in ancient Rome: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Appuleius_Diocles
If we use a 6.5USD to 1 Sestertius conversion ratio (it was around $5 in 2010) he would have made $233,110,280.00 over his career. That's just his winnings from the sport. Imagine if he had advertising income as well.
Yup, this man, an illiterate foreigner, rose to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful Romans of all time. All because he was fast on a horse.
The moral of the story: ordinary people will pay a lot of money to see talented individuals do cool shit. This was two thousand years ago, nothing ever really changes.
I can see how it would have played out: After winning each race Gaius gets off his horse and proclaims to the crowd: "Success takes a lot of hard work, but preparation is nothing without the right equipment. And for that, I choose Cicero's Sandals. When I buy Cicero's, I know I'm getting a quality product made with all natural, gluten-free animal skins."
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