On your marks, get set, pay
Why...
Does watching live sport bother me? Recently there has been some fuss in the USA about NFL football players making a protest by going down on one knee. Well I have a protest... and I am on both knees praying for some sanity. I have just returned from a Thanksgiving week in Washington DC. During that time I was kindly treated to a basketball match with the Washington Wizards and an ice hockey match with the local Washington Capitals. The seats for the basketball cost my host $275 each and the ice hockey an eye watering $375 each. OK, in each case a hot dog and beer were included in the price. In addition my son wanted a shirt of the Washington Capital’s (ice hockey) leading scorer. A snip at $225! Now this poor love is only paid a piddling $16m a year basic so needs those shirt royalties. He is a pauper compared to his football colleagues who can earn ten times that! Yup there are players with $200m contracts... and the market happily pays for it. And to add insult to injury the salaries now require endless commercial breaks to pay for all this. It means a game with an actual playing time of just over an hour can last a decade to play out (well, at least over three hours). To put all this in perspective the result is some season tickets costing $50,000 a year. Now slap my ass and call me Sally but spectator sport was meant to be enjoyed by everyone. At these prices, it is now clearly the preserve of the über-rich. Whatever happened to “jerseys for goalposts and an orange segment at half time”? I am all for the free market but not for the market free-for-all. Salaries for sports stars are eventually paid for by you and I. If I object as a shareholder to some CEO being paid $ gabillion why can I not as a Sky subscriber protest that a bouffant haired soccer star is being paid £2m a month... after tax. Now I know this line of talk is going to make me very unpopular with gilt furniture manufacturers in Cheshire or diamond ear stud suppliers to the NFL in the USA but guys... you are overpaid over compensated over indulged and the real world is way over the rainbow.
