(Dobbs) Is the money for entertainment and sports stars out of whack?
A 29-year-old baseball star and a 33-year-old singer earn the most
When you’re the best, you deserve to earn the most. I don’t quibble with that. But I do have trouble with who’s earning the most.
According to the latest figures I’ve seen, it’s not innovators who are improving our lives in the long term, or entrepreneurs who are creating thousands of long-term jobs. It’s not medical researchers who are trying to cure cancers and other diseases (the average salary for a pediatric oncologist is $170,000 a year), or the climate change experts who are trying to save the planet (where the highest salary is less than $200,000). And it’s certainly not firefighters or police officers or soldiers who put their own lives on the line to protect ours (a private starts in the U.S. Army at $1,638 a month). Or journalists who take risks in war zones to keep the rest of us informed, or teachers who have the heavy responsibility of educating our kids who will shape our future (the highest paid teachers are in New York City, at $80,286, the lowest earn $47,156 in Hawaii).
No, with only a handful of exceptions— like the erratic but ingenious Elon Musk, according to Forbes the richest man in the world, or the second richest, the man who literally changed the way we shop, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos— it’s none of those.
Here’s who it is: it’s the phenomenal baseball batter and pitcher who they call “a two-way sensation,” Shohei Ohtani, who signed in December for ten years with the Los Angeles Dodgers for $700 million. And, it’s the musical phenom Taylor Swift, the singer you can’t escape whether you’re among the more than ten million fans on five continents who will have attended her Eras Tour performances, or whether you’re among the half-a-million people every day who will have seen the Eras Tour film as long as it’s on the silver screen, or whether you’re among the tens of millions who watched Swift on TV, cheering on her Kansas City Chiefs boyfriend from a sky box as the team raced to the Super Bowl.
That’s who earns the most: a 29 year old baseball star and a 33 year old singer. If Shohei Ohtani is the best in his business, he deserves to earn more than anyone else in his field. If Taylor Swift is the best in hers (and this month’s Grammys seemed to say she is), she deserves to make more than anyone else with a voice. But something in my gut tells me the world’s out of whack when Ohtani stands to make almost three-quarters of a billion dollars for playing baseball and when, according to estimates, Swift stands to make more than four billion from this current tour.
It’s not a question of whether anyone needs that kind of money. It’s a question of who deserves that kind of money. The innovators and entrepreneurs, the cancer researchers and first responders, or people who entertain us? Sure, the entertainers do us a welcome service, in show business and in sports. But if I could remake the world, I would have the most money go to people who do the most lasting good, and I’d throw in a few extra points for philanthropy.
However, that kind of thinking evidently is obsolete. After Time Magazine named the likes of Nelson Mandela and Angela Merkel and Volodymyr Zelensky and Greta Thunberg and Pope Francis as its “Person of the Year” over the years— in 2003, it named “The American Soldier,” in 2014 “The Ebola Fighters”— the 2023 winner was Taylor Swift. “No one else on the planet today,” Time wrote, “can move so many people so well.” Well, okay, but is that really all it takes anymore? Is that really worthy of a $4 billion paycheck?
It is fair to say, Swift earns money for a lot more people than just herself. She hands out bonuses to her show’s dancers and caterers and sound technicians, reportedly including $100,000 bonuses to the truck drivers on the tour. She’s generous. And the cities and states where she sings? According to economists interviewed by The Washington Post, she added about $48 million to Cincinnati’s economy when she sang there, the same amount in Kansas City, up to $140 million in Colorado, and upwards of $320 million in Los Angeles. She doesn’t create long term jobs but when she sweeps into a new town, a lot of money sweeps in with her— calculations are that fans have spent an average of $93 million for every show she stages— and with donations to needy causes like disaster relief and food banks, she leaves some of it behind.
But look at it from a different point of view. According to The Post, Swift’s take from her concert tour will be “more than the yearly economic output of 42 countries.” Not that fans are being fleeced. Nobody forces them to pay an average of $456 to see her on stage. That’s what the market will bear. But to me, when you add it all up, it just doesn’t feel right.
Then there’s Shohei Ohtani.
Granted, baseball might never have seen anyone quite like him. The incomparable Babe Ruth, who started as a pitcher but turned into a premier hitter, led the American League in 1920 in home runs (54), in slugging percentage, and in on-base percentage. When a reporter pointed out to him that he earned more than Herbert Hoover, the president of the United States, Ruth answered, “Why not? I had a better year.” Last season Ohtani led the American League in the same categories, including 44 homers. Yet his position is pitcher. Two years ago he led all pitchers in the league in strikeouts. He won 38 games for the Los Angeles Angels, and lost just 19. His lifetime ERA— the Earned Run Average, probably the best measure of a pitcher— is an enviable 3.01.
Those are good numbers. However, maybe they’re out of proportion to his new $700 million contract, which is not just the biggest ever in baseball but the biggest ever in any major league sport.
Compare it to New York Yankees star Mickey Mantle. In his prime, he was the best in the business. He was named to twenty All Star teams. He was part of seven Yankee teams that won the World Series. Mantle was so exceptional that in his 13th season with the Yankees, he pulled down a paycheck for $100,000. Nobody had ever earned that much playing baseball. “After they put me up to $100,000,” he famously said, “I never asked for another raise.” That was his salary for the last six years of his career.
In 2024 dollars, that would be worth just over a million. A tad less than what amounts to $70 million per year for Ohtani. As sports historian Frederic Frommer points out, Ohtani’s really just getting $35 million a year for his batting, and $35 million more for his pitching. It’s still crazy.
We can talk about fans crazy enough to fuel the inflation of a Taylor Swift concert by paying that average of $456 to see her onstage— and especially about the ones who hike up the price on resales to as high as $958. We can talk about baseball team owners who hand out dollars like vendors hand out hot dogs. We can talk about it, but they won’t likely do anything about it.
There are predictions that within a decade, we won’t just have billionaires anymore, we’ll have trillionaires. Whomever reaches that unimaginable plateau will have roughly the same value as Saudi Arabia.
If it happens to someone, and I say this with all due respect because they’re the best in their businesses, I hope it’s not a ballplayer like Shohei Ohtani or a singer like Taylor Swift.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
So right and we the people, the human species have give them that status.