I feel a lot of people in todays society are jealous of the money earned by professional sportsman. So what if bale is on 300k a week? If the company are willing to pay that, why should he turn that down?
Im willing to bet everyone on this site would accept that offer...
Yes it is a crazy amount of money, however football players in the UK will contribute heavily in income tax...say for example a player on 100k a week, they will pay nearly 50k in tax, a week. That's more than most would earn...
They also then buy expensive houses and goods, contributing further to tax and they put vital money into the economy.
Unfortunately for most on here, we will never get close to earning such monies, however it doesnt mean we should criticise others for doing so.
If i was at charlton on 20 k a week and was offered double to play for another club, lets say chelsea (and the club got very good money for me) i would go. Players have a very short career, they need to make the most of it.
Even if you don't like how that revenue is spent or object to the debt carried by Real Madrid, the overall net impact of RM's activities has to be a net positive on the Spanish economy. In other words, how would Spain (or Germany) be better off by inhibiting the club from pursuing strategies to further enhance revenue? Isn't everyone in Europe better off if Americans and the Chinese (and the rest of the world) are buying up even more ridiculous Real Madrid shirts?
My point about the MLB player salaries is that American athletes are routinely paid wages that are apparently an affront to English sensibilities. And with the exception of basketball, there is limited global market penetration for these sports. The bulk of the revenue -- I'm guessing -- is generated within just our market. The same doesn't seem to be true for football, where the reach and potential seem to be even greater. Tonight, the Seattle Sounders played before a home crowd of 38,000 + in a midweek match, their smallest attendance for this season. As appreciation for the professional sport grows by leaps and bounds here, the opportunities for European clubs also grow without them having to do anything dramatically different.
Salaries will continue to increase, but as long as revenue increases, what is the concern? If it is all about bad management of some clubs within this construct, well, overall, the new financial fair play rules are reported to have reduced collective club debt by over a third between 2011 and 2012:
UEFA General Secretary Gianni Infantino said Aug. 30 the rules helped slash combined club debt by 35 percent to 1.1 billion euros in 2012, from 1.7 billion euros a year earlier.
The Sky Sports 'Transfer window Totaliser' last i looked was over 500 million pounds spent , will vat be paid to the government on transfer fees , or are Football clubs far too clever thus avoiding paying vat , any bright sparks on here know?
Sounds like a helluva lot of dosh , enough to build a decent hospital.
I feel a lot of people in todays society are jealous of the money earned by professional sportsman. So what if bale is on 300k a week? If the company are willing to pay that, why should he turn that down?
Im willing to bet everyone on this site would accept that offer...
You lose. Meet you by the Bartram statue before the Ipswich game to collect my winnings.
Appreciate you posting the links, all interesting reads. Not really about Real Madrid per se -- the tax status afforded to RM and Barca also applies to Osasuna and Athletic Bilbao. The plc requirement for everyone else (second division and up) is a domestic policy determination that disadvantages other clubs vis-a-vis these four. But it does not constitute a failure to pay taxes. The evasion of taxes due to the government is a problem (an extreme problem) attributed to other Spanish clubs outside of both RM and Barca.
The articles highlight the absurdity of La Liga with respect to the gulf between the top clubs and everyone else. This is clearly not sustainable: http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/bale-out/29212 But, if that's the problem, then the bigger issue is that a club like Sevilla is such a mess that they have to sell their squad, but then turn around and spend millions of euros on guys like Gameiro, Bacca, and Iborra.
It can only end one way as I see it. The Euro super league the elite have dreamed of for so long. There will be no point in other clubs carrying on, it is impossible to compete; so you will get the usual suspects breaking away, or being forced away as there will be no-one left to play them. The Celtics, Benficas, Manchester Uniteds and Madrids of this world will propel themselves off into the stratosphere, and the rest of us can get on with competing properly at a more realistic level. Not a bad thing as far as I am concerned, as long as from day one the new domestic league shares all TV revenue equally throughout the 80 or 90 clubs that are left, so everyone really does have a chance of wining something once in a while. There will of course be a new top level of clubs such as Everton, Spurs and Villa, but as long as investment rules are put in place and TV money distributed as I have suggested, they will not be able to pull away from the rest as the Sky 4 (+1) have done. It just takes the rest of the clubs to have the balls to demand it.
Why do we describe footballers' wages and 'digusting' and 'immoral'... and yet not for other sportsmen (tennis players, golfers for example) and actors?
My theory: people perceive footballers as having low intellect and the fact that they earn so much drives them wild with jealousy.
Why shouldnt these guys get a large slice of the pie? Good luck to him.
Why do we describe footballers' wages and 'digusting' and 'immoral'... and yet not for other sportsmen (tennis players, golfers for example) and actors?
My theory: people perceive footballers as having low intellect and the fact that they earn so much drives them wild with jealousy.
Why shouldnt these guys get a large slice of the pie? Good luck to him.
Is the PGA, ATP or F1 losing millions of pounds on an unsustainable model?
Are there events losing money because of the crazy wages being paid?
No.
Nothing to do with "wild jealousy" and everything to do with the fact that football clubs are paying players WAY more than they can actually afford and if you care about the game then that should worry you.
F1 is a cash hole, money pours out of the sport, and tennis below the top level is struggling to maintain tournaments.
Football at the top level can sustain the wages, the last Premier League TV deal was worth £5.5bn for 3 years, Real Madrid TV deal is worth £150m a year by itself, they have revenues of €500m a year, and if no one noticed they recovered most of the Bale money with the Özil and Higuaín sales, and that's to forget how much in wages they got off the books with letting Kaka go.
I don't think anyone begrudges Bales (or any other top footballer) a very good wage. He's highly skilled, works hard, and entertains millions of people. It's only right that he should get a fair reward for this. However there's a world of difference between "a very good wage" and the astronomical figures that are being paid out. It's been said here that people oppose it on the basis of jealously. My response to that is, so what? Jealousy is a much maligned feeling. People like to have a go a the jealous as if it's an unreasonable thing to be, but at the end of the day it's just an emotional reaction to your instincts telling you that something isn't right. And if you can't trust your instincts, what can you trust?
For me there are two levels of reasoning beyond the basic emotions though. On a social level, it's around what the purpose of money is. The whole reason for money is to divide up limited resources. If our resources were unlimited, there'd be no need at all for money. But they are. It seems strange to me that in a world where one in eight people are undernourished, anyone can think that such bloated wages are justifiable. It's the startling inequity of distribution of our 'shared' resources that seems so so wrong. I don't blame Bale for this at all, he's just one ordinary guy with one extraordinary talent. There's no reason why he should be expected to turn down his gargantuan purse and I'm sure, hypocrite that I am, if I was in his position I'd be loving all that loot too. But that doesn't make it right, and it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be questioned.
The second level of reasoning is to do with football. The greater the amounts of money that have circulated within the game, the greater the amounts that have found there way to a handful of big clubs whilst draining away from the rest. If you're a follower of Royal Madrid that's a good thing because your team, along with a handful of others, becomes a sporting black-hole sucking in the world's supply of top players. They even have their own name for them: Galácticos.
But whilst it's good for a few clubs, it is bad for football as a whole. Others have already pointed out the dire financial consequences for clubs of lower divisions but even without that it just leads to football becoming more boring.
It's hard to say exactly where thing's started to go wrong as there are so may related causes: - Abolition of Maximum Wage (1961) - Sky TV (1990) - Premier League (1992) - Champions League (1992) - Bosman Ruling (1995) - Hikes in TV Money (Various) - Investment from foreign oligarchs and criminal types (Various) - Increasing financial dominance of a few big clubs (Ongoing)
I'm sure that no-one would want a return to the pre-sixties situation where players were treated like serfs and fans watched games in pitiful conditions with no facilities. But it seems to me that at some point along the line excessive amounts of money stared spoiling things. If I had to pinpoint it, I'd go for the changes to the European Cup in 1992, but ultimately many different factors are tied in together. Take a look at the list below. It shows the winners of the four major European leagues plus Scotland (I put this in as a whim) for the 21 seasons Either side of my 1992 watershed.
I challenge anyone looking at this to say, hand on heart, that the lower half of the list is more interesting that the top half. If that's a bit too much to look at though, try summary:
Football is far more boring now than is was before the money rolled in.
(Note - the Interesting/Boring category is a title that worked for me, but it's not very descriptive. What it shows is, how many times in an era did a team that wasn't in the top two for that time period, win the league.)
Stig: Thanks for putting all that down and I think I understand your points.
I happen to disagree. On the first potential explanation for the instinct, the rationale only works if the pie divided is static. But the pie is not one of known borders and contours; wages are an assignment of value for labor. It is entirely possible, both theoretically and practically, for someone to be paid a wage that generates as much or more of economic value than the amount given to the wage-earner. Salaries are also an assignment of societal value that establish incentives in a market. Bale's absurd salary is a beacon to those with athletic gifts to dedicate and redouble their efforts to become world-class footballers (rather than insurance adjusters, coal miners, or waitstaff). The undeniable effect is better footballers and a deeper talent pool. Perhaps this is uninteresting to an Englishman, but the finances of football make it a hell of a lot more interesting for the rest of the world.
An example: I am currently watching an MLS match where the tying goal was scored by a kid we watch play in American lower division soccer -- on high school fields in front of crowds numbering in the dozens. A belief in the possibility of making a career as a footballer led the kid to Finland (where he played for IFK Mariehamn along with several other North Americans) before he came back home, eventually to line up next to Obafemi Martins. Lamar Neagle is never going to make Gareth Bale money, but he owes his career to the Galacticos.
With respect to the second level, if the watershed moment is the changes in the European Cup in 1992, note that in the 21 seasons prior to that change, there were 13 different Cup winners (Ajax, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Hamburg, Juventus, Steaua Bucharesti, Porto, PSV, Milan, Red Star Belgrade, and Barcelona). In the 21 seasons after, there were also 13 different Cup winners (Marseille, Milan, Ajax, Juventus, Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Porto, Liverpool, Barcelona, Inter, and Chelsea).
In that latter 21 season period, teams from the Netherlands, France, and Portugal were Cup winners. In Portugal, the first period saw three different teams win the league (Porto, Benfica, and Sporting CP). The second period saw four (add Boavista in 2000-2001). In the Eredivisie, during the first period there were four different league winners (Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord, and AZ Alkmaar). The second period saw five (add Twente in 2009-2010). In France, the first period saw seven different league winners (Marseille, Strasbourg, Nantes, Saint-Etienne, Monaco, Bordeaux, and Paris St. Germain), while the second period saw ten (Auxerre, Lens, Lyon, Lille, Montpelier, Paris St. Germain, Monaco, Nantes, Bordeaux, and Marseilles).
Porto, Twente, Bucharest and Boavista were blips. Marseille cheated in the European cup. Chelsea bought their success backing up Stig's view completely, the French league is not a major one. In a Baldrick like way, I have no idea what your first paragraph means, it sounds like a load of boardroom-speak gobbledegook, but I may be wrong in my ignorance of terms such as "the pie is not one of known borders and contours".
I would go back further than Stig, and cite the abolition of the maximum wage as the point the rot set in, that's not to say that the maximum wage was a good thing, in the same way that the excesses of the unions were not a good thing in the 70's, but the decimating of them from 1979 has lead to the ridiculous excessively greedy, top heavy society we live in now, football reflects that situation at the moment. Both are being championed by very few "winners" at the top, relying on the "losers" at the bottom accepting their lot and a few crumbs from the winner's tables. As long as the losers perceive themselves as not as big a loser as the bloke next door they will accept the status quo - divide and conquer.
Like I said in my earlier post, football can do something about it, have the bottle to cut off the "galacticos" and leave them to play each other ten times a season where there is no interest beyond the winners, and that may well be a foregone conclusion by Christmas...
Watching the Bristol match the other night the commentator said B.Citys wage bill last season was 157% of their turnover. This season Division 1 (& I think he said Division 2) teams have a maximum 60% to pay the players wages. Don't think the Prem clubs would ever agree to this.
There has to be a salary cap, thereby spreading the talent and reducing the wages of good but average PL players.
Would only really work if it was done across every league in the world. Otherwise another league would bring in the owners + top players on a larger wage.
There has to be a salary cap, thereby spreading the talent and reducing the wages of good but average PL players.
Would only really work if it was done across every league in the world. Otherwise another league would bring in the owners + top players on a larger wage.
Only if you care about how well Manchester Utd e.t.c do in European competition SELR. The domestic league would be a level playing field.
The statement 'going from on extreme to the other' sums it all up. It is a shame that society can never find the fairer middle ground! Football stitched up the players, now the players stitch up football. Of course we think about the rich players, but football is becoming a more precarious career for others lower down the scale.
The Unions cared more for their workers than the company or the country, now the country and companies cares more for profit than the rights of the workers. Maybe it is the flaw of being human - it is all linked to greed on both sides of the scale. People always want more- they can't say, that is enough, this will do!
Comments
Im willing to bet everyone on this site would accept that offer...
Yes it is a crazy amount of money, however football players in the UK will contribute heavily in income tax...say for example a player on 100k a week, they will pay nearly 50k in tax, a week. That's more than most would earn...
They also then buy expensive houses and goods, contributing further to tax and they put vital money into the economy.
Unfortunately for most on here, we will never get close to earning such monies, however it doesnt mean we should criticise others for doing so.
If i was at charlton on 20 k a week and was offered double to play for another club, lets say chelsea (and the club got very good money for me) i would go. Players have a very short career, they need to make the most of it.
Here is an update on Madrid & Barca....
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/european/exclusive-real-madrid-and-barcelona-face-removal-of-privileges-8749147.html
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/mar/21/eu-debt-spain-football-clubs
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2385943/Real-Madrid-Barcelona-financial-line--curb-spending.html
http://www.football.co.uk/barcelona/tax_authorities_tighten_screw_on_spanish_clubs_rss4326412.shtml
Sounds like a helluva lot of dosh , enough to build a decent hospital.
The articles highlight the absurdity of La Liga with respect to the gulf between the top clubs and everyone else. This is clearly not sustainable: http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/bale-out/29212 But, if that's the problem, then the bigger issue is that a club like Sevilla is such a mess that they have to sell their squad, but then turn around and spend millions of euros on guys like Gameiro, Bacca, and Iborra.
The takeaway, at least for me, is that this will all sort itself out. I think Szymanski is right (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/borussia-dortmund-malaga-political-football-austerity) and that the Bundesliga is just going to get stronger and stronger while the southern clubs struggle from crisis to crisis.
My theory: people perceive footballers as having low intellect and the fact that they earn so much drives them wild with jealousy.
Why shouldnt these guys get a large slice of the pie? Good luck to him.
Are there events losing money because of the crazy wages being paid?
No.
Nothing to do with "wild jealousy" and everything to do with the fact that football clubs are paying players WAY more than they can actually afford and if you care about the game then that should worry you.
Football at the top level can sustain the wages, the last Premier League TV deal was worth £5.5bn for 3 years, Real Madrid TV deal is worth £150m a year by itself, they have revenues of €500m a year, and if no one noticed they recovered most of the Bale money with the Özil and Higuaín sales, and that's to forget how much in wages they got off the books with letting Kaka go.
For me there are two levels of reasoning beyond the basic emotions though. On a social level, it's around what the purpose of money is. The whole reason for money is to divide up limited resources. If our resources were unlimited, there'd be no need at all for money. But they are. It seems strange to me that in a world where one in eight people are undernourished, anyone can think that such bloated wages are justifiable. It's the startling inequity of distribution of our 'shared' resources that seems so so wrong. I don't blame Bale for this at all, he's just one ordinary guy with one extraordinary talent. There's no reason why he should be expected to turn down his gargantuan purse and I'm sure, hypocrite that I am, if I was in his position I'd be loving all that loot too. But that doesn't make it right, and it doesn't mean that it shouldn't be questioned.
The second level of reasoning is to do with football. The greater the amounts of money that have circulated within the game, the greater the amounts that have found there way to a handful of big clubs whilst draining away from the rest. If you're a follower of Royal Madrid that's a good thing because your team, along with a handful of others, becomes a sporting black-hole sucking in the world's supply of top players. They even have their own name for them: Galácticos.
But whilst it's good for a few clubs, it is bad for football as a whole. Others have already pointed out the dire financial consequences for clubs of lower divisions but even without that it just leads to football becoming more boring.
It's hard to say exactly where thing's started to go wrong as there are so may related causes:
- Abolition of Maximum Wage (1961)
- Sky TV (1990)
- Premier League (1992)
- Champions League (1992)
- Bosman Ruling (1995)
- Hikes in TV Money (Various)
- Investment from foreign oligarchs and criminal types (Various)
- Increasing financial dominance of a few big clubs (Ongoing)
I'm sure that no-one would want a return to the pre-sixties situation where players were treated like serfs and fans watched games in pitiful conditions with no facilities. But it seems to me that at some point along the line excessive amounts of money stared spoiling things. If I had to pinpoint it, I'd go for the changes to the European Cup in 1992, but ultimately many different factors are tied in together. Take a look at the list below. It shows the winners of the four major European leagues plus Scotland (I put this in as a whim) for the 21 seasons Either side of my 1992 watershed.
I challenge anyone looking at this to say, hand on heart, that the lower half of the list is more interesting that the top half. If that's a bit too much to look at though, try summary:
Football is far more boring now than is was before the money rolled in.
(Note - the Interesting/Boring category is a title that worked for me, but it's not very descriptive. What it shows is, how many times in an era did a team that wasn't in the top two for that time period, win the league.)
I happen to disagree. On the first potential explanation for the instinct, the rationale only works if the pie divided is static. But the pie is not one of known borders and contours; wages are an assignment of value for labor. It is entirely possible, both theoretically and practically, for someone to be paid a wage that generates as much or more of economic value than the amount given to the wage-earner. Salaries are also an assignment of societal value that establish incentives in a market. Bale's absurd salary is a beacon to those with athletic gifts to dedicate and redouble their efforts to become world-class footballers (rather than insurance adjusters, coal miners, or waitstaff). The undeniable effect is better footballers and a deeper talent pool. Perhaps this is uninteresting to an Englishman, but the finances of football make it a hell of a lot more interesting for the rest of the world.
An example: I am currently watching an MLS match where the tying goal was scored by a kid we watch play in American lower division soccer -- on high school fields in front of crowds numbering in the dozens. A belief in the possibility of making a career as a footballer led the kid to Finland (where he played for IFK Mariehamn along with several other North Americans) before he came back home, eventually to line up next to Obafemi Martins. Lamar Neagle is never going to make Gareth Bale money, but he owes his career to the Galacticos.
With respect to the second level, if the watershed moment is the changes in the European Cup in 1992, note that in the 21 seasons prior to that change, there were 13 different Cup winners (Ajax, Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Hamburg, Juventus, Steaua Bucharesti, Porto, PSV, Milan, Red Star Belgrade, and Barcelona). In the 21 seasons after, there were also 13 different Cup winners (Marseille, Milan, Ajax, Juventus, Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Porto, Liverpool, Barcelona, Inter, and Chelsea).
In that latter 21 season period, teams from the Netherlands, France, and Portugal were Cup winners. In Portugal, the first period saw three different teams win the league (Porto, Benfica, and Sporting CP). The second period saw four (add Boavista in 2000-2001). In the Eredivisie, during the first period there were four different league winners (Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord, and AZ Alkmaar). The second period saw five (add Twente in 2009-2010). In France, the first period saw seven different league winners (Marseille, Strasbourg, Nantes, Saint-Etienne, Monaco, Bordeaux, and Paris St. Germain), while the second period saw ten (Auxerre, Lens, Lyon, Lille, Montpelier, Paris St. Germain, Monaco, Nantes, Bordeaux, and Marseilles).
I would go back further than Stig, and cite the abolition of the maximum wage as the point the rot set in, that's not to say that the maximum wage was a good thing, in the same way that the excesses of the unions were not a good thing in the 70's, but the decimating of them from 1979 has lead to the ridiculous excessively greedy, top heavy society we live in now, football reflects that situation at the moment. Both are being championed by very few "winners" at the top, relying on the "losers" at the bottom accepting their lot and a few crumbs from the winner's tables. As long as the losers perceive themselves as not as big a loser as the bloke next door they will accept the status quo - divide and conquer.
Like I said in my earlier post, football can do something about it, have the bottle to cut off the "galacticos" and leave them to play each other ten times a season where there is no interest beyond the winners, and that may well be a foregone conclusion by Christmas...
Don't think the Prem clubs would ever agree to this.
The Unions cared more for their workers than the company or the country, now the country and companies cares more for profit than the rights of the workers. Maybe it is the flaw of being human - it is all linked to greed on both sides of the scale. People always want more- they can't say, that is enough, this will do!