In any case remove all the subsidies and the superstars will still make massive salaries.
How do you know that?
We where talking about A-Rod's salary. The current Yankee stadium wasn't built with state aid (although there probably was state aid for its renovation). The new Yankee stadium will receive subsidies, but there where no solid plans for it when the Yankee's decided to pick up A-Rod.
The Yankees have over $300mil in revenue. If they had to pay back the state or local assistance in the renovation of the old stadium and forgo the planned new stadium they would hardly be forced to slash salaries.
Very few ball clubs are in the Yankees' enviable position and have anywhere near the Yankee's kind of revenue......but lets say for argument's sake, they decide to build a new stadium seating 60K and costing $1 billion to build.......which is probably cheap given land, construction and labor costs in the NY area. The state provides the $700 million and the owners get private financing for the balance of $300. Lets say terms are 10% over 30 years for both the private and public financing. The monthly nut for the $700 million is $6,200,000, or $74 million annually; and for the $300 million portion, 2.6 million or $31 million annually for a total of $105 million. That's 1/3 the Yankee's annual revenue and you don't think that would put a damper on the size of salaries?
And then there is the issue of property taxes.....I bet stadiums don't pay any. Imagine what the taxes would be on a property assessed at $1 billion.
Other teams don't make quite as much, but there is a lot of money flowing in to professional sports. Sure stadium subsidies have an indirect effect of helping to push up players salaries but the top players would still have 7 or 8 figure per year contracts and 8 or 9 figure total contracts.
Its very direct. There is not one pot for salaries and another pot for expenses. Its the same pot. And when operating costs go up, then something has to give. And there is no way the Yankees could increase revenues to cover the added $105 million cost per year needed to pay the stadium's financing.
My point is that I suspect there are a lot more star athletes out there then we have been led to believe.
My point is that your almost certainly wrong, and American Idol doesn't support your case. You would need hundreds or thousands of professional caliber players, not just a few.
Per sport? That's nuts. A typical baseball team roster is around 35 guys. There are 30 teams in the MLB......so that makes up roughly 1050 players. Where's this need for thousands? Even with a farm team for each major league team, you would still only need 2K total to start a new league. In a country of 300 million people, that's nothing.
And you would need dozens to hundreds of top players. The current league's are already short of things like top pitching or top QBs, with about 30 teams per league.
Yeah, right. Just last season, a 100 games were cancelled due to a shortage of good players. You are grasping at straws.
Add another 15 to 30 teams and the competition will increase those high salaries that you hate so much. Look at the bidding wars for top free agents. Now add another league, and maybe twice the teams bidding for the player, and each team knows that someone that good is in very short supply...
Why is it you claim to believe in free markets but as soon as
I point out a major institution needing some free market treatment, you defend its near monopoly status?
I suspect there are number of athletes that are overlooked. And the greater the supply, the lower the salaries........sports would not be the exclusive club it is now.
Sure more teams would mean more people playing, and some of them would emerge as stars, but there is absolutely no good reason to think that doubling the demand (with two leagues) or even more (if you want multiple competing leagues) would result in an increase of supply even equal to, let alone beyond the increase in demand.
Damn! You are unwilling to even consider the prospects. Unbelieveable.
Its not as if players don't get a chance to be evaluated at lower levels. There are hundreds of minor/lesser league and college teams for players to show their talent. Baseball in particular has a developed system, but other sports give many thousands of players some chance to show they have what it takes as well. Even if these lower level teams didn't exist, double the number of top level teams and you only double the number of the people your looking at, its not like you would vastly increase the pool of candidates. And typically doubling the pool of candidates doesn't double the number of super stars.
No professional team in this country has had trouble finding good players. If they can't get them here, they will get them from Japan, Korea or some other country. Your defense of the current sports status quo is flimsy at best and its anti free markets. Plus, taxpayers are footing the bill for huge salaries for ball players. |
