The top five professional sports contracts in the world are worth more than $2.5 billion.
Ahead of fans eating chicken wings and other tailgate food for the next 17-plus weeks with the NFL regular season starting Thursday night, here is food for thought: Will there be a player contract worth $1 billion?
Last month, Dallas Cowboys star wide receiver CeeDee Lamb signed a four-year, $136 million contract—becoming the second-highest-paid NFL player who is not a quarterback.
In July, Boston Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum got the richest contract in NBA history: five years and more than $313 million.
Look no further than the richest active contracts: Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter/pitcher Shohei Ohtani (10 years/$700 million), soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo (2.5 years/more than $536 million), Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (10 years/$450 million), soccer superstar Karim Benzema (two years/more than $447 million), and Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout (12 years/$426.5 million).
Making a player an instant billionaire would have to be achieved over a long period of time, remarked sports economist Lucia Dunn.
“In most sports, there are too many uncertainties about future performance, possible injuries, etc., to give a contract of sufficient length to warrant the $1 billion mark,” she told The Epoch Times.
There is a salary cap in the NBA, NFL, and NHL, but not in Major League Baseball.
Whichever league hands out the first 10-figure contract would not only make a splash but could also set a precedent for other sports.
It is unlikely that the NBA will set the record due to its six-year limit for contracts. However, “this could be in the next collective bargaining agreement, likely starting in 2030,” and, therefore, the NFL will make this history “because contract length is double the allowable NBA contract term now,” according to David Mondress, an NBA agent and senior vice president of Contract and Basketball Operations at BDA Sports.
“But a lot depends on inflation in media contracts and future demand growth from the sports-consuming audience,” Dunn said. “And these things are hard to predict.”
The insane earnings today would have been inconceivable prior to the late 2010s, even with inflation being a factor in the pay scale.For example, Michael Jordan made just less than $94 million in his 15-season NBA career, which spanned the early 1980s to the early 2000s. That’s an amount the top players in professional leagues now make in as little as two years. Future NBA Hall-of-Famer LeBron James’s last contract was a smidge higher than $99 million over that period.
However, “because of inflation and real income growth over time, I think there will eventually be a player with a billion-dollar contract,” Stephenson told The Epoch Times.
Dennis Coates, an economics professor at the University of Maryland–Baltimore County, said, “The contracts show that people are willing to spend enormous amounts of money to be sports spectators.”
Moreover, the billion in change would have to come from somewhere.
The money behind player contracts comes from ticket and merchandise sales, television and radio deals, sponsorships, and other revenue streams.
But do not expect these owners to share so much of their wealth, remarked University of North Carolina–Charlotte economics professor Craig Depken.
“These players, ultimately, can leverage their impact on league/team revenues in the form of higher salaries,” he told The Epoch Times. “We do not think that North American sports owners put themselves into debt to finance players. However, the same cannot be said for English football [soccer] teams, and in those leagues, financial viability is much more fragile than in North American sports.”
Some of the largest investments in English soccer come from oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
So when should we expect to see the breaking news of the first billion-dollar contract?
Not soon, said the sports economists.
My prediction on which athlete could get the first billion-dollar professional sports contract: Chicago Bears quarterback Caleb Williams.
Yes, the rookie has yet to play a regular-season snap. But he has all the tools to be one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.
As contract values increase over the years, he could surpass Kansas City Chiefs three-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Patrick Mahomes, whom he has been compared to, in earnings. The Bears have completed their two-year rebuild and are stocked with talent, especially on offense with star wide receivers, two of the game’s well-respected tight ends, and a running back room with two No. 1 tailbacks.
Williams is only 22 years old and has a four-year rookie-scale contract with a fifth-year option.
If Williams were to meet, or even exceed, expectations, and deliver the Bears a Super Bowl or two, he would likely demand that his fifth-year option be declined in exchange for a long-term extension. By then, he will be 26 years old and get a nine-figure deal that is front-loaded, with the annual salary declining as he gets older. But the Bears could defer the remainder of the money, as the Dodgers did with Ohtani.
In the meantime, it is baked in that top-tier players will get more dough than everyday people can only imagine earning—unless they win the lottery.
