Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Fun with Math, sports salary edition

According to this report on Bud Selig's salary, he pulled down 14.5 million in salary and benefits, out of a total payroll for MLB of 77.3 million dollars.

What's interesting is they list top salaries of other high-ranking MLB employees, and also state the number of MLB employees as 231. They list the numbers for the NFL also (payroll of 41.5 million to 839 employees). Let's do some math:

MLB Average: 334,632 per employee
MLB without honchos: 52 million between 225 employees: 231,111 per employee

Okay, MLB has umpires, and they make a decent amount of money. Typically, you read that your cash salary is half of your what the company pays for you, so we can say that the average MLB employee makes 115,000 per year cash, with MLB paying another 115,000 in benefits, etc.

Now onto the NFL Average: 49,463 per employee

Can this be right? The average pay is something like 25,000 cash? If we presume that the NFL pays a similar percentage of its base salary to its chief officers (so 67% of salary split among 97% of the employees) then the total compensation is a paltry 34,200 per employee. Take-home pay is around 17,000 per head, then. The average US Salary is something like 25,000. Can this possibly be correct? Does the NFL really pay so little? What exactly do they hire these people to do, and why don't they go do it elsewhere for more money?

The NFL: Top-notch entertainment at rock bottom prices!

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