On the idolatry of athletes

Last week, I came across this item from ESPN, listing the highest-paid athlete from 182 nations in the world. It represents quite the range of salaries, sports, and leagues, and of course I had a bit of fun playing around with the data.

ESPN made it particularly easy for me, since they were kind enough to list each country's per capita GDP along with the salary of their highest-paid athlete. Charting the results (for selected nations) yielded something looking a lot like this:

Obviously, there's a huge disparity between the "haves" and "have-nots", with ratios at the high end blowing away the rest of the world (I listed the top 5 highest ratios, but skipped the next several down to China at 16). In Togo, the most "uneven" country in the group, the highest-paid athlete earns a whopping 24,791 times more than the nation's per capita GDP. This puts the highest-paid American (Alex Rodriguez) and his 713-to-1 ratio to shame.

It should hardly be surprising that many of the countries with the highest ratios are particularly poor nations with star soccer players who play abroad (Emmanuel Adebayor from Togo, Yaya Toure from the Ivory Coast, Herita Elunga from D.R. Congo, Michael Essien from Ghana, etc.), since soccer is the world's most popular game, regardless of economic background.

Of the 15 nations with the highest athlete-to-GDP ratios, 8 of those countries had soccer players as their richest athletes, and 6 of those 8 played in the English Premier League. In fact, one team, Manchester City, has two of the top five "highest relative pay" athletes on their roster, and 5 of the top 32. Man City just might be the world's largest international charity organization.

For these poor nations, athletes certainly know that to leave the nation and play professional sports abroad is their best shot at a better life. Those nations' high ratios say much less about the value the citizenry places on athletics, and much more about the state of the broader economy in those states.

As for the United States, for all the hand-wringing in our country over how "overpaid" our athletes are relative to the average worker, it's clear that the United States is at best (or at worst, depending on your point of view) average when compared to the rest of the world. Of the 182 countries surveyed, the United States checks in with the 69th-highest ratio. High, to be sure, but not completely out of whack with respect to the rest of the developed world.

Because the data were so noisy what with all of the exporting of top athletes to richer nations, I thought it would also be interesting to see how far down the list I would have to go before I found a nation whose highest-paid athlete actually competed in his home nation--that is to say, the "real" highest-paid athlete in the world, in relative terms. Which country, dollar for dollar, was paying the most to watch its athletes play?

I found my answer down at #37 on the list, in India--cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni earns an amazing 1,674 times more than India's per capita GDP, and he doesn't have to leave India to do it. By that measure alone, it's possible to argue that India "values" Dhoni more than twice as much as the USA values A-Rod. Food for thought.

(Side note: if anyone understands the rules of cricket, like even a little bit, please let me know. It was all over ESPN-International while I was down in Jamaica last week, and I seriously have no idea what's going on out there. What the hell is an over? I digress.) 

[ESPN]