Why do companies pay employees to do work for them? They pay them because they need something done, and getting that thing done will help the companies make more money.
And why do people pay so much money for expensive artwork or fancy cars? Because that art or those cars are rare, and rarity can make things valuable.
So if you combine those two things, uniqueness and the ability to make you money what do you get? You get an employee that is worth a lot of money.
That’s what professional sports players are. They are employees of a company, their team, and they are there to compete and make money for their team.
The better they are, typically, the more money they get paid. That’s because the better they are, typically, the more money they make for the team.
That’s why Russell Wilson’s four-year contract with the Seahawks, giving him 140 million dollars, is not as ludicrous as it sounds. Wilson is one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL and part of a team worth 2.58 billion dollars. Russell Wilson is a large part of that worth. His name sells jersey’s and his playing sells tickets. He is one of the main reasons the Seahawks are able to go to the playoffs and a contributing factor to them having won a Super Bowl.
All these are things that make the Seahawks money: a massive amount of money. So if Wilson, or any other professional athlete, is responsible for helping make their team a ridiculous amount of money, shouldn’t they be getting their fair cut of that money?
The same can be said for any other profession. You pay people based on their worth to you, how much money they can make you. Professional athletes make their teams a lot of money, therefore they deserve to be paid a lot.
The idea of uniqueness also comes into play. Professional athletes are one in millions, the really good ones are one in a billion. They are masters of their craft, the only ones that can do it as well as they do.
Nobody is going to pay money to see me throw a football 15 yards and miss my target by five. But they will pay to see Russell Wilson throw a touchdown pass.
Professional athletes are paid proportional to their value to the team, and that is fair.