s0sports industry ecosystem www.ecosports.cn
NFL draft is in full swing, and introductions about players and teams are emerging one after another. Today we will talk about salary.
Indeed, rookie contracts can be said to be the "first pot of gold" in most professional players' lives. With the increase in income of major sports leagues in North America, the salary levels of professional players are also rising, and so are rookie players.
Circle Brother has sorted out the rookie contracts of the top three players in the NFL and NBA draft in the past three years. Through comparison, he found some interesting things. At the end of the article, there is also an report, gift.
text/Li Luyuan
The salary of the North American Sports League is often linked to the league's income. As the most popular sports organization among the four major professional sports leagues in North America, the NFL's overall league revenue has exceeded US$13 billion in recent years. NBA is only ranked third among the four major professional sports leagues in the United States, and the league's overall annual revenue is only about half of that of the NFL.
However, in terms of salary, the average salary of NBA players has risen rapidly in recent years, far surpassing the average salary level of NFL players , and has even surpassed the Major League Baseball (MLB), which has the title of "Best Player Benefit in North America", and has firmly occupied the first place. There are many reasons behind this, and the small number of NBA players is one of them.
↓Average salary of the NBA league ranks first in the world (2017 data)
In the past few days, the 2019 NFL draft is in full swing in Nashville , the capital of Tennessee. After years of hard work and training, all young players finally have to stand on the "big stage" of their lives.
is here. Let's review together how much the top three players in the last three drafts of the NFL and NBA have signed rookie contracts. In the comparison, take a look at the behind-the-scenes stories of major leagues.
NFL rookie income
NFL league stipulates that the contract years of rookie players shall not exceed 4 years, but players selected in the first round can sign a "4+1" contract with the team, of which the fifth year is: "Team Options".
In fact, the NFL did not have this regulation in the early days, and only restricted the contract amount of selected rookies in the first year. But after the Rams, who were still in St. Louis, selected Sam Bradford with the No. 1 pick in 2010, signed a six-year, $76 million rookie contract that seemed "sky-high" at the time, which was shocking.
After that, in order to eliminate this phenomenon, the NFL clearly defined various restrictions on rookie player contracts in the new version of the "labor-management Agreement" signed with the Players' Union in 2011, and set a salary cap for each ranking.
Of course, this "salary ceiling" also fluctuates with league income. As for how to get it out, the NFL official has its own set of calculation formulas, so we have no way to know.
It is worth noting that the contracts of the three rookies in 2018 are all full guarantee contracts , which is really rare in NFL history.
NBA rookie income
As a comparison, let’s also take a look at the treatment of NBA rookies.
NBA League also made clear provisions on the contracts of rookie players. Referring to the 17th edition of the "Labor and Capital Agreement", the contract period for the first round of is 4 years (the form of "2+2", of which the first two seasons are "guaranteed contracts" and the last two seasons are "team options". After the end of the first two seasons, the team must choose whether to execute the "Team Option" before October 31 of that year (if it is a rest day, it will be postponed).
Compared with income, why does the NBA earn more?
should be noted. For the sake of comparison, the calculation of "average annual salary" in the tables listed above is only based on the total contract amount divided by the contract year (the result is retained to one decimal point). In reality, the annual salary amount of the player contract is not equal.
It can be seen that compared with rookies in the same grade, the annual salary of the No. 1 pick in the NFL League is not as good as the third pick in the NBA draft. Although the salary levels of rookie players in the two major professional sports leagues of the NFL and the NBA are increasing year by year, , the salary of NFL rookie players is rising slowly, with an average annual salary difference of less than $1 million; while the contract salary of NBA rookie players achieved an explosive leap in 2017, with an average annual salary difference of more than $2 million!
↑ In terms of big contracts, before the NBA raises salary, it was still the world of MLB. Looking at the 2015 data, the high income of MLB is the most in the world's sports revenue ranking projects.
is the main reason for this phenomenon. is the 9-year US$24 billion "terror" contract signed by the NBA and broadcasters officially took effect in 2016. This contract brought huge commercial income to the league, causing the " salary cap " of each team to rise sharply in 2017.
Secondly, the NBA has a smaller number of players on the roster compared to other leagues, and relatively few people are "dividing the porridge".
Take 2017 as an example. The "salary cap" quota of NBA teams was US$99.093 million, while the "salary cap" quota of NFL teams reached US$167 million, 68.5% more than the NBA teams! But there are as many as 53 players in each NFL team, and only 15 players in the NBA team. In this way, the more than 660 million US dollars added in the NFL are not worth a point at all.
What's more, NFL and NBA have different salary cap systems.
NFL League implements a "hard salary cap" policy, and any team will be seriously punished if the total salary exceeds the limit; the NBA League implements a "soft salary cap" policy, and in addition to the limit, there is also a "luxury tax trigger line", which will be about 20 million US dollars higher than the "salary cap" quota. However, for the team's performance and commercial value, the bosses of each team often resolutely sign huge contracts with the players regardless of paying high luxury taxes.
↓NFL's salary cap last season and the NBA's salary cap increase in recent years
In addition, due to the relatively small number of players, NBA players have higher commercial value than NFL players.
only has rookie players, the top two NBA drafts in 2018 - DeAndre Ayton and Marvin Bagley, have signed huge endorsement contracts with sports brands such as Puma before they even entered the league. Although some NFL rookie players will also sign endorsement contracts with major sports brands, the amount is far less than that of NBA players.
↓In terms of individual players' salary, the NBA is more attractive than the NFL
The above four reasons have caused the overall income of NBA rookies to be higher than that of NFL rookies, but a simple comparison of income data does not mean that the NBA has achieved a rebound in the NFL.
Look at the NFL draft's ratings exceeding NBA events and its huge impact in the United States, we can find that the NFL is still the money-making business machine, but if you want to attract more children to choose football instead of basketball, the NFL may need to think of another way.
Finally, Brother Quan also gave everyone a benefit - in 2016, a think tank called Sporting Intelligence released a global sports salary list , using the same coordinate axis to count the salaries of major alliances.
Friends who want to download this report can leave a message on the backend of the "Sports Circle" official account "Players' salary" to get the download address of the report. Although the data is not the latest, it is still very helpful as an academic reference and popular science!
Sports Industry Ecosystem www.ecosports.cn Original article, welcome to forward it, reprinting is strictly prohibited without authorization. If you want to reprint, please add Circle Girl WeChat (ID: quanmei20)
