Football wages are obscene...

[Craven Mad]

The salaries make sense in a capitalistic market.

If you want change, demand regulation. No one should be that rich whilst people remain in absolute poverty...

[Southcoastffc]

A couple of points/questions.  Is it possible in a free market capitalist environment to structure financial reward in a 'fair' way?   I don't  think so.   And who decides what's fair?    And, whatever one's view of footballers' income, bear in mind that the betting companies around football make phenomenal money (the Coates family who own Bet365 paid £573m in tax this year); Sky et al don't pay to televise football worldwide because they have charity at heart; Daniel Craig is reputed to have earned anything between  £20-50m for one Bond film.  Footballers are soft targets.

[bobbo]

A couple of points/questions.  Is it possible in a free market capitalist environment to structure financial reward in a 'fair' way?   I don't  think so.   And who decides what's fair?    And, whatever one's view of footballers' income, bear in mind that the betting companies around football make phenomenal money (the Coates family who own Bet365 paid £573m in tax this year); Sky et al don't pay to televise football worldwide because they have charity at heart; Daniel Craig is reputed to have earned anything between  £20-50m for one Bond film.  Footballers are soft targets.

Good points south coast , yeah they are soft targets , I guess it's because we all see it regularly where footballers are concerned. I should be used to a very unlevel society at my age .

[alfie]

150k a week may sound a lot. But most players will be lucky to get that sort of money for 10 years.

Have to be at the peak of their game playing for the best teams.

Don't forget the tax that most of them actually pay.

Yes but most of us don't end up as multi millionaires after a lifetime at work.
A considerable amount of people don't earn in 20 years what they can earn in one.

[mrmicawbers]

Something has to change after the pandemic, surely.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/55873590

Half a Billion euros. For a man to kick a ball around. No wonder Barcelona are almost bankrupt. It's obscene!!

No, it's not obscene. It is just the market for professional footballers in Europe.

if you don't lik the wages they pay footballers in a capitalist market go nd live in China.Oh

[Whitesideup]

A couple of points/questions.  Is it possible in a free market capitalist environment to structure financial reward in a 'fair' way?   I don't  think so.   And who decides what's fair?    And, whatever one's view of footballers' income, bear in mind that the betting companies around football make phenomenal money (the Coates family who own Bet365 paid £573m in tax this year); Sky et al don't pay to televise football worldwide because they have charity at heart; Daniel Craig is reputed to have earned anything between  £20-50m for one Bond film.  Footballers are soft targets.

Good points, well made. 

Many in the entertainment business are paid phenomenal sums often totally out of kilter with the skill set. And to the point made about surgeons  .. well, the top surgeons will earn fortunes as well, the irony being that maybe a top plastic surgeon in America working with the stars will command more than one who performs life-saving surgery in a state hospital. Life isn't fair, but taxation is supposed to be a way of making sure people pay appropriate and fair contributions - so it's very frustrating that the rich find it so easy to avoid. 

[Cambridge Pete]

What I can't understand is how FFP allows a club such as Barca, who are apparently nearing a Billion in Debt, to pay (if reports are correct) one player circa 2mill per week? 

[RufusBrevettatemyhamster]

I get they should be paid more because they're constantly in the limelight and, players like Messi are a once in a lifetime phenomenon, but £2 million A WEEK is just ridiculous.
What annoys me more about it all though, is who really pays for it? Its the fans. High ticket prices, expensive shirts, having to pay for TV to watch the games. Pay them less and give more back to the fans. Without who, they wouldn't earn that much.
Its not fair.

[blingo]

Blame their AGENTS

[filham]

So all the money Barcelona gets from his shirt sales and the like should go to charity too then.

If a player brings a club millions of pounds each year then they deserve to get paid. Without Messi then Barcelona are not bringing in anywhere near the money they bring in with him there.

Glad someone mentioned shirt sales because they are grossly over priced as well.

[Craven_Chris]

I would say that of all the groups in the world who get extreme high pay, elite footballers seems to be one of the fairest. Sure its just entertainment and we can debate all day about the value to society of that, but, to be a high paid footballer, you pretty much can only get there by being very very good at football indeed.

You cant get away with playing for Man Utd just because you went to Eton, you will get found out on the pitch, you cant get to play for City because your dad is chums with Prime Minister. You cant bribe your way into a premier league first XI. It seems to be one of the few legitimate meritocracies!

If the footballers didnt get that money, the money would still go into football (because we are all demonstrably happy to pay it), but it would instead line the pockets of club owners and other institutions. And I would suggest that those who would benefit the most then may not be as legitimately skilled or deserving as the footballers who they employ!

[Statto]

I would say that of all the groups in the world who get extreme high pay, elite footballers seems to be one of the fairest. Sure its just entertainment and we can debate all day about the value to society of that, but, to be a high paid footballer, you pretty much can only get there by being very very good at football indeed.

You cant get away with playing for Man Utd just because you went to Eton, you will get found out on the pitch, you cant get to play for City because your dad is chums with Prime Minister. You cant bribe your way into a premier league first XI. It seems to be one of the few legitimate meritocracies!

If the footballers didnt get that money, the money would still go into football (because we are all demonstrably happy to pay it), but it would instead line the pockets of club owners and other institutions. And I would suggest that those who would benefit the most then may not be as legitimately skilled or deserving as the footballers who they employ!

Some would argue that you can't blag your way through certain other prerequisites of those sorts of jobs, like a degree in PPE at Oxbridge, but I suspect you'd disagree because of your obvious preconceived political views.

In any case, irrespective of a minority who may blag their way in by benefitting from an old boys network and class discrimination, at least the professions you're talking about (bankers, journalists, lawyers, politicians et al) perform vital functions for society (vital in a free, democratic society at least) whereas there's nothing vital about football. They also work harder and longer than footballers, and generally still don't earn as much (albeit they may still earn an awful lot).

So I maintain the view that whilst I support free markets, there are very few, if any, outcomes of the present system that seem less "fair" to me than the amount of money we pay thick lads in their 20s to kick a sphere at each other.

[RufusBrevettatemyhamster]

I would say that of all the groups in the world who get extreme high pay, elite footballers seems to be one of the fairest. Sure its just entertainment and we can debate all day about the value to society of that, but, to be a high paid footballer, you pretty much can only get there by being very very good at football indeed.

You cant get away with playing for Man Utd just because you went to Eton, you will get found out on the pitch, you cant get to play for City because your dad is chums with Prime Minister. You cant bribe your way into a premier league first XI. It seems to be one of the few legitimate meritocracies!

If the footballers didnt get that money, the money would still go into football (because we are all demonstrably happy to pay it), but it would instead line the pockets of club owners and other institutions. And I would suggest that those who would benefit the most then may not be as legitimately skilled or deserving as the footballers who they employ!

Some would argue that you can't blag your way through certain other prerequisites of those sorts of jobs, like a degree in PPE at Oxbridge, but I suspect you'd disagree because of your obvious preconceived political views.

In any case, irrespective of a minority who may blag their way in by benefitting from an old boys network and class discrimination, at least the professions you're talking about (bankers, journalists, lawyers, politicians et al) perform vital functions for society (vital in a free, democratic society at least) whereas there's nothing vital about football. They also work harder and longer than footballers, and generally still don't earn as much (albeit they may still earn an awful lot).

So I maintain the view that whilst I support free markets, there are very few, if any, outcomes of the present system that seem less "fair" to me than the amount of money we pay thick lads in their 20s to kick a sphere at each other.

Not sure politics comes into his point, the points he made could be in regards to ANY political party.  But this isn't a political point, it's about people getting paid an extortionate amount of money.
Yes, they have to be at the top of their games, but even average u18 players at big clubs, that don't make it, are millionaires before they hit 21.

I know someone who was on the books of SPurs, never even made the reserve team but got paid £800 a week. over £41k a year...at 17!! No need for that sort of money to someone who ended up spending it on drugs and booze.

[Craven_Chris]

I would say that of all the groups in the world who get extreme high pay, elite footballers seems to be one of the fairest. Sure its just entertainment and we can debate all day about the value to society of that, but, to be a high paid footballer, you pretty much can only get there by being very very good at football indeed.

You cant get away with playing for Man Utd just because you went to Eton, you will get found out on the pitch, you cant get to play for City because your dad is chums with Prime Minister. You cant bribe your way into a premier league first XI. It seems to be one of the few legitimate meritocracies!

If the footballers didnt get that money, the money would still go into football (because we are all demonstrably happy to pay it), but it would instead line the pockets of club owners and other institutions. And I would suggest that those who would benefit the most then may not be as legitimately skilled or deserving as the footballers who they employ!

Some would argue that you can't blag your way through certain other prerequisites of those sorts of jobs, like a degree in PPE at Oxbridge, but I suspect you'd disagree because of your obvious preconceived political views.

In any case, irrespective of a minority who may blag their way in by benefitting from an old boys network and class discrimination, at least the professions you're talking about (bankers, journalists, lawyers, politicians et al) perform vital functions for society (vital in a free, democratic society at least) whereas there's nothing vital about football. They also work harder and longer than footballers, and generally still don't earn as much (albeit they may still earn an awful lot).

So I maintain the view that whilst I support free markets, there are very few, if any, outcomes of the present system that seem less "fair" to me than the amount of money we pay thick lads in their 20s to kick a sphere at each other.

On reflection, there is another major gap in my fairness point which is that access to footballing riches is highly discriminatory on gender grounds and quite possibly other factors like sexuality and race too so I take back the fairness claim!

For what it's worth though, I do think it is easier to blag oneself into Oxbridge with the right background than it is to blag oneself into a premier league first team.

Also I tried really hard to be a footballer when I was young and got nowhere near (I was crap and it seemed impossible), but I did end up becoming a banker by following the path of least resistance!

I dont have numbers to hands but I suspect the professions you mention are overwhelmingly dominated by people of similar social-economic backgrounds which, if true, would point to a fairness problem. But perhaps not, maybe that is just my own bias.

[Statto]

Patently there are issues such as class, gender and racial prejudice in various professions, and it's equally clear that at least two of those (class and race) aren't barriers to entry into football, given the majority of footballers are from a working class background and a disproportionately large number are from an ethnic minority. So in that very limited respect, yes, it's more meritocratic than some industries. But that somewhat misses the point that it's the scale of their salaries, given the lack of value added to society, that's unfair. I should imagine, for example, that there's still lots of discrimination in the fire service, which is clearly unfair, but no one could twist logic enough to say that makes it fairer for a footballer to earn £30m pa than it is for a fireman to earn £30k pa.

[Craven_Chris]

Patently there are issues such as class, gender and racial prejudice in various professions, and it's equally clear that at least two of those (class and race) aren't barriers to entry into football, given the majority of footballers are from a working class background and a disproportionately large number are from an ethnic minority. So in that very limited respect, yes, it's more meritocratic than some industries. But that somewhat misses the point that it's the scale of their salaries, given the lack of value added to society, that's unfair. I should imagine, for example, that there's still lots of discrimination in the fire service, which is clearly unfair, but no one could twist logic enough to say that makes it fairer for a footballer to earn £30m pa than it is for a fireman to earn £30k pa.

The fairness point I was going for was that: given society has already determined how much value it puts in the entertainment provided by football (a lot), I think that, subject to the point about gender and other biases, that value is generally going to the correct people, e.g. footballers (ok and agents)

Whereas in other industries, including finance as well as public services, I am less convinced that the value society is putting into them is being distributed to the right people, ie those who are adding the value in the first place, or that every person has a fair chance of being the beneficiary of that value distribution.

So it wasn't about how much society values different professions and whether that is fair, I was saying that at least in football it seems like that value is mostly flowing to, and being enjoyed by, the people creating it and that people have a fairly equal shot, at birth, of reaping those benefits (at least if born male and healthy)!

[Aaron]

150k a week may sound a lot. But most players will be lucky to get that sort of money for 10 years.

Have to be at the peak of their game playing for the best teams.

Don't forget the tax that most of them actually pay.

I don't buy that particular argument.

If you take average figures (~£30k annual salary and 38.3 years working lifetime) you get to £1.15m average lifetime earnings for an ordinary bloke in the UK.  It'd take you 8 weeks to earn that on £150k a week.  This is all before you start to figure in things like relative savings on buying houses/cars in cash, having a massive wodge of money you can invest now rather and watch grow rather than sitting in a current account for 4 weeks between pay cheques earning a mighty 0.0001% AER.

I've been working 20 years (on relative peanuts for most of that) but am currently lucky enough to work for one of the biggest companies in the world on what still feels like an obscene wage for where I'm based. I've just had what will probably be the best year of my entire career and still fell a new VW Golf short of that weekly figure across the twelve months.  Because I never expected to earn anything like that sort of money in my life, I didn't know anything about the "60% tax band" that exists if you earn within a certain range.  I actually ended up paying proportionally *more* tax than your average Premiership footballer this year, and I'm counting the days to pay day at the minute!

I can much more readily accept that someone like Messi earning an absolute fortune because his presence alone brings in more to the Club than they're paying him, particularly when he backs that up on the pitch.  There's a lot of relatively unknown players (mostly thanks to Chelsea and Man City) who got signed up to stupid money contracts off the back of a decent spell in a single season but never made the grade at their new club and who now find themselves in the surreal position of not actually being able to do their job because they're getting paid too much to *not* do their job. 

There's something a bit.. gross.. about that.

[AnOldBrownie]

150k a week may sound a lot. But most players will be lucky to get that sort of money for 10 years.

Have to be at the peak of their game playing for the best teams.

Don't forget the tax that most of them actually pay.

I generally support free markets and since much of this is money coming into the UK/Europe from Russia, the Middle East, China and the USA, I'm not really against it.

However I can't really see your point above. Even for only 10 yrs and at 50% tax, a player on £150k is still going to have received net pay of more than £30m by the time they're in their early thirties. Even a good Championship player on £30k pw over the same period is going to have £6m in the bank in his thirties, more than most doctors, lawyers, bankers etc. It's a ridiculous amount of money and totally disconnected from what they add to society.

Couldn't the same be said about actors?  Musicians?

I'm not saying wages aren't out of wack.   I'm saying it's not unique to athletics.

[Steeeeeeeeeed]

At the start of the Sunderland Till I Die S2:E2 it says the following about average wages in  the UK...

Premier League is £64k a week

Championship is £14k a week

Division One is £2k a week.