Do you follow sports, or have you ever been to a sporting event? The number of people who profit from athletes' product is enormous: the owners first, of course, but then stadium owners and managers, vendors, transpo and parking providers; then people that sell all that apparel, plus broadcasters and the other media that follow the event. Everybody's got a hand on what pro athletes produce.
> Now I do understand your point about exploitation being a technical term in
> a Marxist sense, that owners in the sports industry appropriate surplus
> value from athlete workers. Even so, the highly paid professional athlete
> is still left with a relatively gargantuan share of the surplus product.
> Often enough to employ as capital to invest and become capitalists
> themselves.
Speaking of professional basketball, which is the sport I know best, an elite athlete makes about $20 million a year, but they only do that for probably six or seven years at most. The rest of the time they are working off three or four years of rookie contracts at one or two million a year. So an elite athlete--and we are talking 10 percent of the league, 30 or 40 people--makes probably $150 million over his career. After taxes buying houses and cars and supporting your extended family, there might be $50 million left. Maybe. A nice pile of change, maybe enough to buy a car dealership or a few restaurants, but hardly enough to become a big capitalist. Even Michael Jordan, by far the wealthiest athlete ever, could not afford to by a sports franchise by himself.