blipadouzi wrote:Do the athletes deserve those salaries because the box office & food stands bring in so much money for the team due to their participation...yes, from that point of view I would say so.
But the next question is, should the box office be charging so much and do the food stands have the right to over charge for their goods? Reduce the player salaries to a reasonable wage, and then you reduce the box office tickets as a result, which will in turn generate more revenue in the long run as fan attendance will increase.
I know I would love to go to hockey games even once or twice a year, but the ticket prices are outrageous. That is, IMO, the main reason we lost our baseball team. Not for lack of interest in the sport, but for lack of willingness to pay the ticket prices.
That's great, as long as you expect everyone involved to be a philanthropist. It's not at all clear to me, however, why charitable giving should be directed toward those who wish to attend sporting events.
Okay, basic economics: generally speaking, the rational businessman/entrepreneur is going to be a profit-maximizer. This doesn't mean that he wants the greatest amount of money possible in absolute terms, as other things (such as leisure or adhering to an ethical code) may be more important to him, but for whatever work he does, it will typically be his goal to make as much money as is possible. This is only common sense, and even the most generous of people will but rarely declare that while they could make $30 / hour, they would really prefer to only make $18 for the same work. (Even an extremely charitable person, moreover, who wants to give a lot of money away, will first seek to earn money in order to be generous with it.)
We know from experience that stadium vendors can get away with selling hotdogs for $5. You suggest that this is to recoup the costs of high-paid athletes. Nonsense. Are those purchasing the hotdogs consciously deciding that while they would otherwise refuse to pay $5 for a hotdog while watching the game, they'll do so for the satisfaction of knowing that it's subsidizing the salaries of their favorite players? Highly doubtful, to say the least.
Why are they paying $5, then? Economics makes this really simple: because they value eating a hotdog more than they value keeping that $5 in their wallets. Stadium vendors can charge that amount because they have a captive audience -- thousands of people who aren't going to leave the stadium and want to snack while watching their team. Even if player salaries fell by 50% tomorrow (presuming all the same players remained), hotdogs would still cost $5, for one reason -- because people will buy them at $5.
Just because an owner gets a windfall in terms of paying less to players, why should he lower prices? He's currently charging whatever rate makes him the most money (subject to his own entrepreneurial judgment, of course, which may admit some error). Think of it this way: say you're selling your car to pay off an appliance. You have $2,000 in payments, and advertise the car for $4,500. If the store suddenly announced a retroactive rebate on the appliance worth $500, would you lower the price of your car to reflect your lessened expenses? Or would you still sell it for whatever you could get for it? The consumer is concerned with your car, not your stove -- and the guy in the stadium is concerned about the game and his hotdog, not player salaries (other than as a conversation piece).
I understand that you'd like to be able to go to sporting events, but those involved have no obligation to make entertainment cheap enough that everyone can justify going. Your post would indicate that you think the current system a bad business model. If that's so, it's rather peculiar that everyone, in every sport, is so eagerly replicating it, don't you think?
He is a good quarterback, but he is also the highest paid, by far... I don't think it evens out... 
And Kobe was good until he started the whole thing about wanting to be traded. Now I'm over him.
