Athlete Salary Comparison

The salaries of professional athletes have skyrocketed since the mid-1970s. A benchmark of the change was an arbitration ruling in Major League Baseball that allowed players to become free agents and opened the door to bidding wars for talent. That, coupled with the rise of televised sports and the advertising revenues that began to flow, has led to the end of an era in which salaries were capped at the whim of owners into the era we now know as a free-market bidding war. In 1969, St. Louis Cardinal Hall of Famer Curt Flood refused a trade and challenged the baseball reserve clause that essentially made players the property of the team with which they signed. Even though there was a player's union, they had no leverage to negotiate better pay. Today, different sports have different rules that apply under union-negotiated contracts. Some sports have no unions, so wages have become a hodgepodge of what the free market will bear.

  1. The Way it Was

    • After leading Major League Baseball in home runs for six consecutive years, a feat never achieved before or accomplished since, Ralph Kiner became the first baseball player to be paid $100,000 a year. He played for the last-place Pirates and asked general manager Branch Rickey for a raise in 1952, to which Rickey responded, "We finished last with you, and we can finish last without you." Kiner was traded to the Chicago Cubs the next year. Consider, also, Babe Ruth made less than $800,000 total during his 14-year career.

    Minimum Wages Now

    • The least a professional football player can make in 2009 is $310,000. The minimum a toothless hockey player can make is $450,000. For the NBA, even white men who can't jump must be paid $457,588. And a lowly utility player in Major League Baseball can't earn less than $390,000, even if he hits below the Mendoza line. (That's a .190 batting average for the uninitiated). And in Major League Soccer, the minimum salary is $20,100. By comparison, Tiger Woods is the world's highest-paid athlete, making more than $110 million a year. And that number represents only a part of his winnings on the golf course. He pulls in more than half his money from endorsements.

    From the Famous to Who?

    • He's not even at the top of the money-maker list but most everyone knows of Michael Jordan. He's best known for his incredible exploits on the basketball court, and his winning smile. In the 1996-97 season he was paid $33.5 million, or just about $1.06 per second. But give yourself a pat on the back if you know Valentino Rossi, who raked in $35 million for winning his eighth World Motorcycling Championship in 2008. He earns $16 million for riding for Yamaha and double that when you add in licensing and endorsement deals.

    Let's Not Forget Kimi

    • At $45 million a year, Finland's Kimi Raikkonen is Formula One's highest-paid racecar driver, last winning the World Championship in 2007.

    A Little Perspective

    • There are plenty of other athletes who earn upward of $30 million for everything from golf to bass fishing to tennis to soccer. Ronaldinho earns $30 million playing what is technically referred to as futbol. To put things in perspective, the median household income in the United States is about $50,000 (that would be a family with two wage-earners). Where is Branch Rickey when you need him?