lukethedrifter wrote:thrill wrote:lukethedrifter wrote:That golf and boxing have far greater international appeal than football it's not that hard to believe.
I'm not going to argue this, though I think it's dubious, because it's not important.
Football is wildly more profitable than golf and boxing, but revenue shared among an entire organization is usually less than revenue given to an individual as in Golf or Boxing. Money Mayweather and Phil Mickelson don't have to pay an organization of dozens of employees. They eat all the pie. NFL player's only get little slices.
You think it's dubious that boxing and golf have far greater international appeal than football and baseball?
Absolutely the way boxing is set up favors the very few stars not having to share the total pie with teammates nor even other teams. Sure. But those dollars are coming from a wider net than NFL dollars as well, no?
You don't think that if golf were merely an American phenomenon or North American that the Tiger Woods/Lefty money would be significantly less?
Dubious? Really?
Yeah, dubious. I don't know how you can quantify it. If there's a place to look up international revenues for individual sports, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if more people followed golf. I'd be shocked if more people followed boxing. The problem I have with that is what does follow mean? In a conversation about athlete's earnings, a fan base's population doesn't matter. It's spending does.
Also, the term "international" is really vague. Do you mean the number of countries who have a significant interest in watching it? That obviously doesn't matter due to the disparity in revenue each country's sporting public generate. If you have 100 one dollar bills in your wallet and I have one 100,000 bill in mine, I have a lot more money than you. In this case, America is the $100,000 bill. If you look at the world as one population, the NFL and College Football have more actual fans than golf and boxing. I define actual fans as people who spend money to support the sport. That includes buying the products advertised during television broadcasts.
American sports are light years ahead of European sports in terms of knowing how to maximize earnings, franchise value and licensing. When the Jacksonville Jaguars are worth way more than Liverpool Football Club or AC Milan despite not having 1/100th the fan base, it's clear that fan base population isn't what matters. Revenue sharing, ad sales, media licensing and image licensing is what matters. Because of our more sophisticated sports business practices, the industry of pro and amateur sports is bigger in this country than anywhere else and it's not close. Individual athletes salaries are predicated on their individual sport's collective bargaining agreement (another area where our sports are miles ahead of European professional leagues) while endorsements are predicated on marketing appeal, q rating, quality of representation and a whole bunch of other factors.
Population matters in endorsements, but how much? Last year, Cristiano Ronaldo made 11.3 million pounds to play for Real Madrid. That translates to $18,267,112. His total earnings last year from SI's international list were $30,300,000.
That's $12,032,888 in endorsements. Mostly from Nike I would imagine. Peyton Manning, an NFL player who is considered one of the two or three best players of his sport, like Ronaldo, made $13,000,000 in endorsements. Dale Earnhardt Jr made $22,000,000 in endorsements. These are two athletes that play in sports that are almost entirely provincial.
Given that the elite golfers and NBA players make the most in endorsements, it's pretty clear that while being internationally recognized does a lot for your earnings, America is still the number one market to be big in, and it's not even close.
Golf is also aided by the fact that they are patronized by the biggest corporate and financial entities in the world like Royal Bank of Scotland, ING, Allianz, JP Morgan, etc.
Floyd Mayweather is a red herring on the list because he's been involved with something like 4 of the 15 most lucrative prize fights of all time in PPV sales. The more PPV sales you bring in, the higher percentage of revenue sharing you get. It compounds. When he fights Pacquiao, they'll probably break the record he set when he fought De La Hoya and after that, you'll most likely never see a prize fighter on this list again.
