The Quality of the Sports - Case Study Example

Professional athletes Report outline Introduction The introduction is an important section of the report. The sectionintroduces the topical issue by providing a brief discussion of the issue thereby introducing the audience to professional sports. Additionally, the section narrows the report by adopting a stand in the argument. The report does this through the thesis statement, which in this context shows that professional athletes are overpaid and should therefore earn less in future. Body This section of the report comprises of a number of paragraphs, which discuss the topical issue. The paragraphs have in-depth analysis of the issue thereby validating the claim the researcher makes in the thesis statement. Each paragraph argues a fact, which the researcher presents in the introductory topic statement. The numerous paragraphs ensure that the researcher discusses the typical issue exhaustively. Conclusion The conclusion is a summary of the entire discussion in the report. It reinstates the viewpoint of the researcher by marrying the body to the introduction thereby validating the thesis statement. Works cited The section lists the resources used to compile the report. The resources are various literature materials prepared by other scholars who had investigated the topical issue in the past. Listing them shows the professionalism of the report since the list shows that the author acknowledges the original authors of the works. Introduction Professional sports just as the names suggest are games in which the players earn a salary or a form of payment for their engagement. The payment for athletes in the professional sports has a major topic for discussion owing to the large amount of money the athletes receive as payments. Professional athletes spend most of their time training and often expose their bodies to immense risks as they engage in the sports. They do so to entertain as they play in the fields and pitches. For such difficulties and the risks they often undertake, the clubs and sports federations often pay the athletes large sums of money a feature that makes the salaries a contentious issue in the entertainment industry to date. Despite the numerous arguments and justifications that clubs and federation give for paying the athletes the sums they do, the fact is that professional athletes are overpaid and should, therefore, earn less than they currently do in future as the discussion below portrays. Professional athletes are entertainers just like any other. They entertain their spectators when they play their respective sports in the tracks and in the different pitches. In doing this, the athletes earn ridiculously high amount of money. A number of professional athletes make as much as one hundred million a year simply for playing golf, boxing or even running 42 kilometer marathons. While the athletes work hard in order to excel in the sports and often strain their bodies, their salaries are often ludicrously high. David Beckham, one of the highest paid soccer players, signed a $ 250 Million contract to play for a five year period. Others like Tiger Woods and Floyd Mayweather among numerous other marathon runners have earned millions of dollars for playing in single tournaments (Fainaru-Wada and Lance 101). Firstly, the amounts professional athletes earn are not commensurate with the stress they face both in their trainings and while at play. A doctor or a university professor undergoes more pressure and challenges than a professional athlete does either at play or in training, reports from the bureau of labor shows that a doctor earns an average of $239,000 to $258,000 while a professor working in a public institution earns an average of $127,000. The two categories of government employees work harder than professional athletes do. Furthermore, their contributions are essential to the development of the society. Despite such, the fundamental employees earn peanuts compared to the salaries of the various professional athletes. This shows that the in terms of job descriptions, a professional athlete should earn a relatively lesser amount than they currently do. Another equally important argument is the fact that professional athletes work less in a year than any other employee does in any sector of the economy yet they are among the highest paid in the economy. Professional athletes earn large sums of money for short-term contracts and for playing a number of games in a year. NFL footballers, for example, play sixteen games in a season. The same is the case with most of the major soccer leagues in the world such as the Champions League and the English Premier League where players play thirty games in a regular season. Professional golfers and runners among other categories of athletes engage in equally few tournaments in a year yet they earn the ridiculously high amounts of money in salaries per year or per tournament. The large amounts of money professional athletes earn in their various sports is among the basic factors affecting the quality of the sports throughout the world (Bakere 76). As explained earlier, professional athletes have few tournaments in a year yet their earn millions. The athletes therefore spend most of their time idle a feature responsible for the numerous scandals and misdemeanor the employees engaged in every time. The athletes, therefore, feel invincible in most cases; they commit crimes feeling that they can pay their way out of any situation. The fact that some of the athletes are not educated individuals worsens their behavior since they have more money than they can spend. Various professional athletes engage in scandalous activities most of which make them a nuisance to the rest of the society. Besides the misdemeanor by most professional athletes, the large salaries remain a motivation for both the athletes and their spectators to engage in unethical practices all of which continue to destroy the reputation of the various sports. Doping, for example, is a contentious issue in the modern day society (Quirk and Rodney 61). A number of runners have been accused of doping as thy use a number of contraband drugs to enhance their performance while in the tracks. Cases of doping continue to tarnish the reputation of athletics throughout the world. The professional athletes lose their titles owing to such unethical engagements. The same has been the case with match fixing in soccer among other similar sports. The growth of betting businesses enhances the stakes in various sporting activities. The investors in such businesses approach professional athletes with lucrative offers in order to fix a match. Such developments arise because of the large salaries the players earn that have in turn raised the stakes in the sports thus making players who earn uncompetitive amounts easy to compromise thereby affecting the quality and growth of the sports globally. The organizers of the tournaments and leagues among other sports activities have the primary responsibility of raising the large amounts of money to pay the numerous athletes depending on the nature of the sports. The organizers, on the other hand, must always make profits by selling the sports to the fans of such sports. They do this by charging entrance fees through the sale of tickets and the various media (Kaser, Ken and Dotty 98). Additionally, they do this by selling sports merchandise to the fans among other members of the society. The high salaries the organizers of the leagues pay to the athletes influence the prices of the tickets. Most of the tickets are expensive and often unaffordable to a large section of the society. The sports merchandises are equally expensive and so are the media channels that distribute the sports. Paying for subscriptions on pay cable televisions in order to access sports channels is a costly undertaking with most people often opting to watch such sports from restaurants and in clubs. Reducing the salaries paid to the sports athletes would concurrently lower the ticket prices, the prices of the sports merchandise and television subscription fees. This would in turn enhance the development of the sports since the audience would grow tremendously. Economists argue that people pays for services. This argument adopts that the services that fans pay for is not always commensurate to the services they obtain from professional athletes. As stated earlier, professional athletes should earn less in future since they have numerous other better ways of making money. Proponents of a better pay and those justifying the ridiculously high pay the athletes earn claim that they often risk their lives and overstrain their bodies. The fundamental fact is that the athletes understand the risks in the sports before they indulge in the. Furthermore, there are riskier jobs in the economy but those who undertake them do not earn even a fraction of the amount professional athletes do. The president of the United States, the world’s largest economy, for example, receives an annual salary of $ 400,000 while the highest paid Bears player earned $13 million in 20111. A number of presidents throughout the world have been assassinated on their jobs a feature that shows the amount of risk such individuals expose themselves to while working as the chief executive of an entire country. Additionally, professional athletes have numerous other ways of earning more money. This implies that even if they earned less in the future, they would still supplement their salaries with the money they make from such secondary sources. Key among such sources is endorsement of products through adverts. Commercial organizations use billions in marketing and advertising with most of them often using professional athletes as their preferred celebrities. The amounts of money the stars earn from such endorsements are justifiable given the fact that they render a commensurate service. The fact that some governments do not tax the amount professional athletes earn in international tournaments overseas further worsens the situation since they do not have any direct benefits to the economy. Numerous civil servants earn way less but continue to remit their taxes on a monthly basis. Such arguments make the need for professional athletes to earn less more prudent since the government should enact laws that encourage taxation of the money the professional athletes earn especially from international tournaments. In retrospect, professional athletes should earn less than they are earning now. As discussed above, the athletes currently earn a ridiculously high amount of money in salaries. Some professional athletes sign short contracts for which they earn hundreds of millions of dollars. Furthermore, they play in few tournaments in a year a feature that makes very game expensive. Paying the players such large amounts of money in salaries affects the quality and reputation of the otherwise reputable sports. The numerous cases of doping and match fixing attest to the fact that the money affects the quality of the sports. Furthermore, the large salaries influence the ticket prices that affect the growth of the sports throughout the world. Works cited Abuse of Steroids in Amateur and Professional Athletics: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundred First Congress, Second Session, March 22, 1990. Washington, DC: U.S. G.P.O, 1990. Print. Bakere, Samuel R. Hot Topics in Sports and Athletics. Hauppauge, N.Y: Nova Biomedical, 2008. Print. Fainaru-Wada, Mark, and Lance Williams. Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, Balco, and the Steroids Scandal That Rocked Professional Sports. New York: Gotham Books, 2006. Print. Kaser, Ken, and Dotty B. Oelkers. Sports and Entertainment Marketing. Mason, Ohio: Thomson South-Western, 2008. Print. Quirk, James P, and Rodney D. Fort. Pay Dirt: The Business of Professional Team Sports. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1992. Print. Read More