Ok guys, this has been bugging me for a while. I'm a big NFL fan and I know that American Football is the most popular sport in America. What I want to know is, how come Baseball players get $200 million++ contracts? Whereas Calvin Johnson broke the record with a $130 million contract in the NFL.

I turn on a Baseball game and half the stadium is empty most of the time. It seems popular, but nowhere near as popular as the NFL. How can the organisations afford to pay such big contracts? And how come NFL players get lower paid contracts in relation to the popularity of the sport.

Any help clearing this up would be great!

What games are you watching that the stadiums are empty? Pretty much any good team or one that has a loyal following will sell-out the stadium.

Admittedly I don't watch much, but the NFL seems a lot more popular. How come their is such a gulf in the money paid to players?

The $200 million baseball contracts are over 10+ years, no NFL player would ever get that long of a contract.

EDIT: $ per year would be a better measure. I don't have the time or desire to look into that atm.

The baseball games I've gone to are packed...

Yes the NFL is more popular than the MLB, at least in the U.S. but I guess it's not a significant enough amount. sbr also makes a good point. NFL players have significantly shorter contracts because injuries are a bigger factor in their league.

I didn't realise the contracts were longer, that's what I was curious about.

I think baseball teams have a lot more money than people think. I have no idea about the numbers but there is a national TV contract, just like the NFL. The NFL deal is much bigger but each baseball team also has its own local TV/radio contracts; NFL teams can't do that, everything is national and split evenly amongst the 32 teams. Also baseball teams have 81 home games, football teams get 8. The biggest teams regularly get 2+ million total attendence, some break 3 million. Most NFL stadiums are 70,000-80,000* seats, they would have to build 250,000 seat stadiums to get that total number. Even if the NFL stadium held 100,000 they would only get 800,000 fans in the stadium buying tickets, parking, beers, foam fingers etc. I would bet most baseball teams have more liquid cash than the everage NFL team.

*Off the top of my head.

Football puts a cap on salaries as well. Baseball does not.

I've been to Pirates games where there has been 4-5k people tops. Place looked like a ghost town.

Those 200+ million dollar contracts are really rare. I think only 2 people ever got them and like others have said usually last ten or more years.

another thing to look at, is that even if NFL is more popular then MLB, there are only 16 Regular Season Games, then what...3 Playoff games? And then the Superbowl. For a total of 20 games in an entire season. That's not a lot of revenue drawn in. Baseball has 162 games in it's regular season, then another possible 5 + 7 + 7(Wildcard, Divisional, Pennant) then another potential 7 for the World Series itself. That is a total of(if it goes max amount) 188 games in an entire season for at least 2 teams, or 9x more games in a season to draw in revenue. That's a boatload more cash to work with, no matter how you look at it. Even the teams that don't make it to the playoffs are still going to be playing 8x more games then the entire NFL season.

Why do they play so many games in Baseball? That's why I've never got in to Baseball or Basketball. So many games makes them meaningless. I love how every single game in the NFL is the Super Bowl for the guys out there. So much intensity.

There have been 4 players to get $200+ million dollar contracts, and three of them were in the last 4 months.

ARod was the first and also received a $200+ extension to that contract.

Albert Pujols and Prince Fielder and Joey Votto all got huge contracts in the off season.


Baseball and basketball are more like marathons and the football season is a sprint. I have no idea why the NBA season is so long (well I do and it is all $$ related), but you really need to play 100+ games in baseball to really see who is the best.

I didn't know about Pujols and Votto. When the Pirates are your home team you don't pay attention as much. Twenty years of futility does that. The only reason to go is if someone sticks you with free tickets.

That's not the majority of the league though. Last season 20 MLB teams averaged less than 75% home attendance occupancy. There were only 6 teams that averaged above 90% capacity.

That's why I like the NHL. Arenas at max capacity are 16,000-18,000 people and for most teams, every single game is sold out. And the players contracts are miniscule compared to other pro sports.

Save maybe Crosby who earned $44 million over 5 years.

I think the real question is why do NFL or MLB players get 100+ million salaries at all?

Because there are millions and millions of people who are willing to pay to watch them work and the teams need to do something with that money.

NFL is definitely more popular than MLB in the US. Some of this, I think, is due to the difference in length of the season/number of games, as someone mentioned. It's easier to watch (let alone stadium-attend) every game of your team in NFL, for example. The Superbowl is one game, not a series of playoffs then a 7 game WS. With baseball...people have to work, hard to find time (or cash) to go to the stadium every day at 5 or 7pm for a 4 hour ballgame. Hence for the less popular/less winning teams you may see a lot of empty seats, especially in the early season.

(and of course, many think baseball is "boring" and/or will only watch the playoffs/WS, heh)

That said, MLB is very popular...but it's like any team sport - there are teams that are a lot more popular than others, have bigger/extremely fanatic fan bases even when losing, bigger sponsors, etc, meaning those teams have the deeper pockets.

Watching American sports is absolutely horrible in the first place; the only reason they can get paid that much is because of all the godamn ad breaks.

The sports themselves are great, but oh dear god, you guys have terrible television coverage.

TV sports broadcast ad money does not go to the sports teams. Broadcast and cable networks pay sports leagues for the national rights to televise their games. They then turn around and sell ad time to advertisers. Bigger ratings, more they can charge for an ad.

I'm not sure if individual teams see some of that cash from the league or not....I think teams have their own set of advertising and ways to make their private funding. Could be wrong tho.

And what's wrong with our coverage? Some of the national networks have some booth people who are terrible (Fox...) but local coverage can be very good.

I find it ridiculous that either of them get payed that much to begin with.

The problem is that when I watch a live game of rugby on TV, we get a few very shortened ads during stoppages, an ad break at half time, and thats it.

When I watch American coverage of the NFL, there are full ad breaks every few minutes, the hosts constantly do that stupid ass "Bought to you by Coors! Drink Coors!" or whatever every time they finish a sentence... Maybe you've got used to it, but it's crazy how many ads you guys have to put up with.

I don't really see your point. Those are the sponsors for the game so they sorta have to be mentioned. What do you expect?

We also get sponsors, and they get a logo that flashes on screen every now and again.