The highest contract in all of sports history was given out in back-to-back offseasons in MLB. These two contracts worth over $700 million have caused some fans to become upset with the amount of money these athletes are earning.
Baseball player Shohei Ohtani signed a 10-year $700 million contract in 2023 to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers. However, this contract would shortly be topped the following year when the New York Mets signed right fielder Juan Soto to a 15-year $765 million contract.
Soto and Ohtani are not the only athletes making monster money. Twenty-five MLB players have signed a contract for at least $200 million, 13 NFL players have signed a contract for more than $200 million and 24 NBA players have signed a dotted line to guarantee them over $200 million.
These large contracts are no longer a once-in-a-blue-moon event. Almost every offseason in these three major American sports leagues has had a contract signed for more than $200 million.
Fans are becoming upset because when teams sign high-profile players for massive amounts of money, they need to compensate by raising prices which directly negatively impacts the fans.
According to KTLA, a news channel in Los Angeles, the Dodgers’ average ticket price in 2025 is $181, a 25% increase from 2024. Fans are upset that they have to pay more and more money to see their favorite team play because the owners are paying such high contracts.
These owners are billionaires; many fans believe they shouldn’t get punished for their favorite sports teams signing a high-contract player. The Dodgers spent over $1 billion in the 2023 offseason on just two players alone.
Since there is no hard salary cap in baseball, the Dodgers were able to spend this much without a care in the world, due to them bringing in $549 billion in 2024.
Fans aren’t only mad that the owners are raising ticket, food and beverage and parking prices, but that also the owners aren’t using any of the billions of dollars they earn to help out the community.
According to MLB, the Dodgers give out $60 million dollars to the community through charities, however, that $60 million is a fraction of the $549 billion the Dodgers gained as revenue in the 2024 season.
Fans aren’t asking for the Dodgers to spend all $549 billion on the community; however, Los Angeles ranks as the second largest city in homelessness population, according to USnews.com, only behind New York.
Los Angeles isn’t the only city where people are upset about the care of the community, New York has two teams in the top five for revenue and salary, yet New York ranks first in homelessness population according to USnews.com.
Fans are tired of feeling like the owners care more about money than the people who give the owners the money they love so much.
Fans of teams that aren’t a large market in America have the opposite reaction to all of this.
Fans of teams like the Rockies, Athletics, Pirates and Rays are all upset as their billionaire owners refuse to spend money.