The first is corporate culture creeping into some sports leagues when it comes to athletes’ salaries. When you compare the top 1% of earners in the U.S. to the rest of the country, there hasn’t been as much income inequality as we have today since 1928, according to Inequality.org, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.
As The Ringer, a site that covers sports and pop culture, points out, something similar is happening in the National Football League. This off-season, the top free agents are getting huge contracts, but many of the rest of the players in the league are not making as much as they used to. As an example, Ronnie Hillman was the 2015 Super Bowl hero for the Denver Broncos. Before the next season started, the team released him so it wouldn’t have to pay him his $2 million contract. He ended up signing a $760,000 contract with the Minnesota Vikings, and the contract stated that he wouldn’t get all the money if he got injured (he is currently a free agent). Unlike in Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association, in the NFL money in a player’s contract isn’t guaranteed. He can lose a lot of it if he gets injured or released by a team.
But even in professional baseball there’s a huge income gap. Enough minor league players on the cusp of making it to the big leagues make so little — just $3,000 to $7,500 a season -- that a federal judge last week revived a class-action lawsuit for minor league players who claim they were paid even less than minimum wage.
The other major trend continuing to hurt many athletes is the gender wage gap. Players on the U.S. Women’s National Hockey team, which won the gold medal in six of the past eight world championships, said they will boycott the upcoming World Championship Tournament to protest their low pay. Players say they are paid $1,000 a month for six months during the years of an Olympic Game, but nothing from USA Hockey outside of that. Some players may also receive between $700 and $2,000 during those months from the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Direct Athlete Support program.
Members of the United States Women’s National Soccer Team have also been trying to get equal pay. Five of the team’s stars — Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn, Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe — filed a wage discrimination lawsuit against U.S. Soccer last year, nine months after winning the 2015 World Cup. According to the filing, the women’s team generated nearly $20 million more revenue than the U.S. men’s team, but the women were paid much less than the men.
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