Ben Gilbert
π€ SpeakerVoice Profile Active
This person's voice can be automatically recognized across podcast episodes using AI voice matching.
Appearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
While we're contrasting leagues, there's this pretty interesting thing that I've been thinking about, which is this cooperative capitalist communism thing that the NFL did.
It was really good at creating parity among teams to be the most competitive, but let's take it to the level of the players.
Interestingly enough, the NFL has been the best of any of the leagues at creating the narrowest band of player compensation in the same philosophy that they applied to the league competition.
Now, of course, it is nowhere near equal pay among players.
And like, yes, it's a bummer that while Aaron Rodgers makes $50 million a year, there's a long tail of players that only play one to three years making league minimum and then turn out, which I think is mid single digit millions of lifetime compensation from football.
So players are definitely variably rewarded based on their value to any given team.
But the NBA and the MLB are way less equal than the NFL.
The superstars in the NBA, like LeBron James, including sponsorships, makes $127 million a year.
There is no one in the sport of football that comes close.
There are three basketball and three soccer players at the top of the list before any football players.
The NFL has managed to sort of smooth the curve more than other sports have.
Apparently, LeBron James has signed some secret deal with Nike for the rest of his lifetime that's something crazy high that is just not even accounted for in these numbers.
This is actually a good place to flip to power.