OT: Why do NBA players make so much more money than soccer players?

[Duke4life831]

Not from Barça directly though, you're taking into account sponsor and stuff, his salary is less than 20 mil a year

No I'm talking about just from Barca and his recent pay bump. He was making about 20 mil a year up until this summer where reports are he is getting payed between 36-39 million euros

Where u read that? I dont think its true, Neymar just signed a contract extension and its supposed to be the biggest contract extension of all time

Neymar is reportedly going to make 25 mil euros AFTER TAXES compared to Messi who makes around 20-22. I think you are missing a big part in your argument. Contracts over seas are usually reported for numbers after tax. Unlike here the numbers we hear are for before taxes. That's a huge difference

[NinjaSheppard]

Soccer also has transfer fees. You don't really get players for free often (Zlatan and Alves for example will make more money this year than they would have if they had transfer fees) and as a result its hard to also pay players top dollar when you have to pay their teams millions to acquire them.

[Duke4life831]

Soccer wages reported are usually post tax.

Yup. This is where many people go wrong. The contract numbers we see from soccer players over seas is their take home money (post taxes) not pre tax. Most people over hear don't realize this

[swaelo]

In the English Leagues there's like 150 teams, England is the size of California...

To be honest the NBA would be great with promotion/relegation!

Yeah but im not talking about the second or third division, not even the lower table teams, im talking about teams like Utd, Barça, Real, Bayern, that are richer than the top NBA teams

But when you say soccer is the most popular sport, you're counting with all those different leagues and such. If you instead look at leagues individually, none of them has a NBA level of revenue.

Actually soccer players make a larger percentage of the revenues generated by the sport than NBA ones.

]Then they have much larger rosters. 24 players or so in the first roster, plus reserve team, plus plenty of players in youth teams already with professional contracts. They also have higher labor costs because they need to pay a lot more to acquire players.

Hadnt thought about the youth system and B teams, makes sense, and now that i think about it, usually when it comes to like the stadiums and practice facilities, while with NBA teams, its the cities that pay for the arenas (if im not mistaken), in soccer the teams have to pay for all of that

[King of Canada]

Soccer is corrupt

[Duke4life831]

So if we want to compare Neymar at 24 is going to make roughly around 27-28 million US dollars after taxes. Lebron this past year made 24 million before taxes, you add in taxes and you're looking around probably 12-13 million. So Neymar at 24 is making probably twice as much per year than Lebron

[Buckeye-NBAFan]

Aren't there are only about 25-30 soccer teams in the world that generate revenues of $150M+ per year? Team #20 on the Forbes list generated $151M. With the TV increase, all 30 NBA teams will generate $150M+ per year this year. And they have fewer roster spots to pay.

[OkcSinceSGA]

Because when they get their balls kicked it hurts a lot more.