Professional Sports is a business+ entertainment [and college sports as well] just like movie production is a business + entertainment. The debate about exorbitant salary of pro sports athletes goes back to at least Babe Ruth in 1930 making $80,000, more than the President of the USA, and the Babe was asked about it by the press, and he famously answered: I had a better year than the President.
The athletes have slowly obtained more power and leverage in this business. Free Agency - thank you Curt Flood 1969-72, and Reggie Jackson's free agent deal in 1976 for $3.5 million over 5 years. Unionization 1983 began the Marvin Miller years, and ever bigger shares of the revenues, and ever bigger team salary caps and the CBT.
If a star like Tom Cruise can make $50 million to make a movie, why can't Shohei Ohtani / Aaron Judge make $50 million to play baseball. It seems obscene, that grown men get paid to play a game that little kids play for exercise, fun and competition and the love of the game, but the teams are making money one way or the other.
Yet I do agree with you, that it should have a limit. At some point the teams should take all of that media money, and use it to provide lower ticket prices, rather than giving it in ever higher salaries and ever higher ticket prices [and parking and beer and hot dogs]
I have 2 issues with Trout, Harper, Judge (baseball, or LeBron, Durant, Curry in basketball, and so on) and so on making $30-40-50 million and more.
1) the discrepancy between the star salary, and the guy at the end of the bench, last on the roster of 15 or 95 depending on the sport. Just as there are income inequality demands floating around "progressive politics" that the CEO should not make 1000x the lowest paid worker (which I don't agree with,) In sports, I do think there should be a maximum multiple of the star salary over the roll player.
2) the guaranteed contracts handed out in Baseball & Basketball. Tom Cruise doesn't get a 10 year x 10 movie x $50 million per movie guaranteed deal, and neither should athletes. These guaranteed deals ruin franchises, when more often than not, the athlete that is 10 years into his career, falls off the cliff - do you hear me Albert Pujols?
"Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there." - John Wooden
