{"id":3494,"date":"2012-09-09T12:08:54","date_gmt":"2012-09-09T16:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/?p=3494"},"modified":"2012-09-09T12:14:40","modified_gmt":"2012-09-09T16:14:40","slug":"nhl-lockout-a-squabble-between-multi-millionaires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/?p=3494","title":{"rendered":"NHL Lockout: a squabble between multi-millionaires"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How can anyone have any sympathy for the labour disputes between sport franchise owners and our modern day gladiators. Still, each time there is a dust-up in a sports arena, players claim they\u2019re \u201ctaken advantage of\u201d and owners cry \u201cpoor. \u201c<\/p>\n

Seriously, the only people really hurt by sport-shutdowns are the fans. Season after season, loyal fans dole out hundreds of dollars to attend the major-day sporting event. They buy team merchandise. They purchase cold hot dogs and warm beer at a small ransom. They empathize with their favorite players and live by every team decisions.<\/p>\n

And then they must endure a strike\/lock-out (call it what you want) because multi-millionaires can\u2019t agree how to wade through the piles of cash\u2026 Owners have the problem of divvying up hundreds of hundreds of millions of franchise dollars each year. The athletes all get paid handsomely for playing their game. Here\u2019s what our gladiators currently make on an annual basis:<\/p>\n

Baseball<\/em><\/p>\n

minimum salary – $480,000<\/em><\/p>\n

average salary – $3.44 million \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

average career earnings – $18.2 million \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

NFL<\/em><\/p>\n

minimum salary – $390,000<\/em><\/p>\n

average salary – $1.1 million \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

average career earnings – $2-3 million (based on an average career of 3.5 years) \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

NBA<\/em><\/p>\n

minimum salary – $473,604<\/em><\/p>\n

average salary – $5.276 million \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

average career earnings – $21.5 million \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

NHL<\/em><\/p>\n

minimum salary – $525,000<\/em><\/p>\n

average salary – $2.4 million \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

average career earnings – $12- 13 million<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

With this amount of money in play for each gladiator we admire and cheer for \u2013 there\u2019s but one conclusion:\u00a0 the multi-millionaire players and the franchise owners are \u201cgaming their fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, as the deadline for the NHL negotiations tick down this week and we see all the doomsday scenarios for the great sport of hockey, is there any wonder there\u2019s no sympathy and only disgust from fans?<\/p>\n

(ed. \u2013 The gluttony of the professionals have prompted me to tune out the TV broadcasts this year and head out to local rinks to watch the junior teams across our community.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How can anyone have any sympathy for the labour disputes between sport franchise owners and our modern day gladiators. Still, each time there is a dust-up in a sports arena, players claim they\u2019re \u201ctaken advantage of\u201d and owners cry \u201cpoor. \u201c Seriously, the only people really hurt by sport-shutdowns are the fans. Season after season,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[53],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3494"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3500,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494\/revisions\/3500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}