Don't Hate Athletes for Being Capitalists, Hate Capitalism

This week, Liverpool forward Raheem Sterling turned down the team's offer for a new contract, and almost immediately he was branded as ungrateful and greedy for suggesting he needed to study his market to see if he'd be better off playing elsewhere. The criticism became so severe that Sterling felt the need to give the BBC an exclusive interview to discuss his reasoning.

"It's not about the money at all," Sterling told the BBC.

BBC sports correspondent Natalie Pirks was quoted on her organization's website: "I could sense palpable frustration at everything that has been said and written about him recently. More upsetting for him was the way some Liverpool fans now perceive him as a mercenary. He saw this interview as a chance to put the record straight."

Sterling faces an almost impossible task in setting the record straight. For the most part fans have little sympathy for players during contract negotiations. Nobody really sees an employee simply gauging his market value from millionaire, sometimes, billionaire sports owners. Instead the general perception has become that an athlete is greedy for seeking the best possible contract.

Sterling shouldn't have to make the distinction that his motivation is not money, because it shouldn't matter. In most every other field, Sterling would be applauded for fighting for his individual negotiating rights. But in sports, management has curiously won the public relations battle.

Because while Darrelle Revis, Robinson Cano, and every Scott Boras client gets criticized for seeking the best monetary deal, the only people who they are taking money away from are rich owners. That's where the money not spent on player contracts goes: into their pockets.

"When we get to owners and players, it's a really funny thing," said University of Michigan sports economist Rod Fort. "You would think that fans who by and large nearly all of them earn their money off their labor—it's labor income, like 90 percent of us do—that they would side more with the players than the owners because the owners are not earning it off of labor. They're earning it off of accumulated wealth and they're reel to reel capitalists. But you know what? It never works out that way."

Fort argues that it's not about whether the 80s mantra of "greed is good" applies to sport, but whether the term "greed" is relevant at all in discussing economics in general, and sports specifically.

In Fort's second undergraduate economics class, a professor made the point that both management and labor can be considered greedy since they both aim to be as profitable as possible. That's the capitalist system. Therefore, the professor argued that the word "greed" should be eliminated from the discussion.

"It's not an operational term is it?" Fort's professor told the class. "It doesn't really help us distinguish how people are making choices. So let's just forget about it and get it out of the way."

The most common correlation fans make about player salaries is that they help drive up ticket prices. But that's a false premise, according to Fort. Ticket prices are determined by supply and demand.

Noted agent Leigh Steinberg, the inspiration for the movie Jerry Maguire, remembers that during his early years of representation, he'd often suggest to team owners during contract negotiations that players would take less money in exchange for a promise that owners would keep ticket prices down. At that time—with the NFL still in looking to build a huge fan base—Steinberg believed it was important for fans to have affordable access to games in order to build popularity.

Steinberg remembers one time when he made that suggestion an owner put his arm around him and said, "Son, you can make that pledge until the cows come home but no one is ever going to take you up on it. Like any business, we'll raise the cost of our product until we no longer can sell it."

Steinberg believes part of the perception problem is that people relate to athletes in a way they don't relate to movie stars or musicians. Most everyone at some point has played sports in their life. Not everyone has acted or sang in public.

"Virtually everyone would want to take the place of these athletes," Steinberg said. "The concept is not that they're gifted, talented, elite who are performing in the entertainment business in a sport that generates profit. But the feeling is that they're getting paid for a game. So the amounts seem incredible. So it's a different view toward athlete's salaries than heavily compensated people in any other area."

In reality, Steinberg said, athletes are just as specially trained at their profession as actors, musicians, or anybody else in the entertainment field. In fact, athletes might deserve the money more since they are putting their bodies at risk.

Additionally, Steinberg said television revenue has increased salaries at such an astronomical rate that the numbers become difficult to digest. And, the glut of media means these salaries are constantly being reported publicly, even if the public isn't always given the correct context as to how the money is actually distributed. For example, only $39 million of Revis' new five-year $70 million contract with the New York Jets is actually guaranteed.

Meanwhile, people don't have as easy access to owner's profits since those aren't made available.

"The public doesn't see that Jerry Jones with the Cowboys or Robert Kraft with the Patriots, or what have you, are generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues and player salaries are less than half of the overall revenue stream," said Syracuse Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics professor and graduate program director Chad McEvoy.

In many leagues, player revenues have actually decreased. NBA and NFL players now receive less of a revenue share in their current collective bargaining agreements than they did in previous deals. And as high as Major League Baseball player salaries are, they have not matched the growth of revenue in the sport.

So the players are making relatively less, and yet are still getting cast as greedy for wanting more. While fans shouldn't necessarily sympathize with professional athletes, they should at least be aware of the context of the market in which these athletes operate before casting judgment on what motivates them during contract negotiations or even labor negotiations.

Steinberg remembers how shocked his client Steve Young was at the backlash when he signed his then-record 43-year $40 million contract with the USFL's LA Express in 1984. One national newscast used the headline: "Sports Economics Run Amok."

It was then Steinberg realized how dangerous it was for fans to be aware of athlete salaries. Now Steinberg said he advises clients to offset their large salaries by starting charities and scholarships and by being contrite in their public comments.

Players must turn the public relations fight in their favor because Steinberg believes negative perceptions toward player salaries can be harmful if fans turn away from sports as a result of what athletes earn.

And with fans bombarded with sports business information, there is no turning back. People expect to know about sports contracts. They are news.

"We're fascinated by the wealthy, we're fascinated by our lack of imagination," Fort said. "I don't think that's just a sports thing. That's a reflection of a general sort of, I don't know what you want to call it, a personality disorder. It's a reflection of the general way that people think about the wealthy. And players are wealthy."