In the United States, there are four major sports leagues, namely NFL (National Football League, National Football League), MLB ( Major League Baseball, Major League Baseball), NBA (National Basketball Association) and NHL (National Hockey League, English National Hockey League).
At present, the NFL is the well-deserved "leader" of the United States. It ranks first in terms of revenue and ratings. Its annual Super Bowl is the top ratings. Its midfield show is known as the "American Spring Festival Gala".
is followed by MLB, the only sports league in the United States that can wrestle with the NFL. Moreover, the popularity of baseball in the United States is said to be higher than that of American football .
is the NBA and NHL. As of now, the NBA is slightly better than the NHL, but some sports fans say they are tied, sometimes the NBA is third, and sometimes the NHL is third.
We can find a phenomenon, that is, although the NBA is not in the top four sports leagues in the United States, the salary of players is the highest among the four leagues. Why is this?
1.NBA fewer people
Looking at the four major sports leagues in the United States, the number of teams is almost the same. There are 32 teams in the NFL, 30 teams in MLB, 30 teams in the NBA, and 31 teams in the NHL. However, the number of players varies greatly. There are only 15 players per team in the NBA. In contrast, the other three have about 40 players per team in MLB and about 23 players per team in the NHL. In the NFL, the average number of players per team is as high as 53, more than three times the number of players in the NBA team.
In this way, this principle is very simple. The more people share the benefits, the fewer each person gets. This is one of the reasons why NBA players have high salaries.
2. Basketball is relatively popular
From the perspective of the sports events involved in the four major leagues, although the NFL relies on the strong operation of the league, more and more people around the world have begun to come into contact with American football, but American football is still the lowest in the world; baseball is very popular in North America and Japan, and in Central and Western Asia, some countries that are popular in cricket will also have a certain popularity, and there will be no others; as for ice hockey, the United States, Canada, Eastern Europe, and Nordic regions are more popular. Their popularity around the world is obviously weaker than basketball.
The more popular a sport, the more exposure and topical the players will be. In addition, both the league and the team are keen on building players, and of course they are willing to spend money on players.
3. Salary Cap
This factor is more complicated.
First of all, we need to popularize the concept of salary cap. Generally speaking, the so-called salary cap is the "salary range upper limit". The total salary paid by each league team to all players of the team shall not exceed this salary range upper limit. The average salary of all teams corresponding to this must also exceed the "lower limit of the salary range", also known as the "bottom of salary", which is also one of the league's methods to ensure the average strength of all teams in the league. The establishment of the salary cap is, first, to maintain the balance of strength of each team and avoid the wealthy big bosses from recruiting star players as they wish. Teams in some small cities can also be competitive; second, to effectively control the expenses of each team and maintain a good financial situation.
In addition, the salary cap is divided into hard salary cap (Hardcap) and soft salary cap (Softcap). NFL and NHL implement a hard salary cap system, that is, the total salary of any team's annual staff cannot exceed the salary cap, even if the team is rich and willing to spend money, it is not possible.
The NBA's soft salary cap is significantly different. In the NBA, as long as the third-party custodial salary is adopted or the boss pays luxury tax , the total salary of the team can exceed the salary cap.
To put it bluntly, the salary cap of the NBA can be changed, but NFL and NHL cannot be changed.
This season, the NBA's salary cap is $101.8 million, and the luxury tax threshold is $123 million; the NFL's salary cap this season is about $188 million, and this reality cannot be broken. Although the total amount is high, the NBA's relatively flexible salary restrictions, coupled with the various factors mentioned above, the salary of NBA players of the same level is significantly higher than that of NFL players.
has the lowest salary cap. This season, the NHL announced a salary cap of $81.5 million for the new season, an increase of $4.5 million from the previous season, but it is still the least among the four major U.S. leagues. That is to say, NHL players have the lowest salaries in the Big Four.
The worst among them is the NHL new players. The new players who entered the NHL for the first time signed an entry-level contract with the team. The annual salary cap of the entry-level contract is only $925,000, which means that the fixed annual salary of NHL new players is not even within the million US dollars.
NHL newcomer contract
Although it is not a problem to add the competition performance income and signing bonus, the annual income exceeds one million, compared with other athletes, they are still the poorest. Coupled with various deposits, taxes, brokerage salaries, and personal high consumption, many NHL rookies have embarrassing that they can't afford to buy a house with millions of dollars in annual income.
Finally, I want to talk about the salary and salary cap of MLB.
Previously, MLB did not set a salary cap, that is, the salary of players is not restricted. In recent years, MLB has implemented a soft salary cap, but because the luxury tax line is blocked, it is actually still close to the no-salary cap limit, which makes MLB the league with the largest income difference between American players.
Moreover, if we look at the income of MLB players, we will find that although the overall level is not as good as the NBA, due to the loose salary cap restrictions in the league, some MLB superstars sometimes have higher salaries than NBA superstars.
Stephen Strasberg
Take the 2018/2019 season as an example. The highest annual salary of MLB comes from Stephen Strasberg of Washington Nationals , at $38.3 million, which is higher than the NBA's first annual salary Curry ($37.45 million); the second highest annual salary of MLB is Max Shezel, who also plays for the Washington Nationals, at $37.4 million, which is also higher than the NBA's second annual salary Chris Paul ($35.65 million).
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