Not sure about you guys but I'm a big sports fan.
I like the Mets in baseball. Their star pitcher, Jacob DeGrom signed a $137.5 million contract 5 years ago. After the 4th season, he's allowed to opt out and pursue more money in free agency. And despite playing for the Mets for 8 years, despite being adored by the city and fans, he recently said he would opt out and seek a better deal.
$137.5 million. In 5 years. It doesn't adjust for anything he made before 2018 (he was 29 at the time), or anything he can make off the investments of all that money.
Here I am crunching the math and figuring out that with a $2.5 million net worth, I would never have to work another day in my life. If I could just park that in a high yield savings account making 2% on that per year (I know that's considered an insanely high APY these days and doesn't exist), I would earn $50,000 a year in new money. I could easily live a nice middle class life on that, never have to touch the principal, and leave the bulk of it to the next generation.
With $137 million, it would be impossible to spend it in 3-4 lifetimes. You could buy a $15 million, 15 bedroom, 15 bath home on 15 acres of land and not even bat an eye. In actuality he could provide for the next 20 generations. Each generation would have a little over $6 million. Most families will not earn close to that in their lifetime.
But it's not good enough for him because many of his peers are earning close to $400 million per 10 years and he feels he's getting ripped off and is underpaid. How gross is that?
IMO we're going to see the first billion dollar sports contract by 2030. It was only around the year 2000 that $5 million a year was a mega contract. If you go back to 1980, good players made 250k.
By the way, AA pitchers make $600 a week and AAA pitchers make $700 a week. They survive off ham and cheese sandwiches in catering and sleep on air mattresses.