Calling someone who makes $5 million annually “underpaid” would be absurd under most circumstances. Professional sports contracts does not meet that criteria.
For all of the flack professional athletes get over “making millions to play a game,” it’s worth noting that they’re actually worth it—at least sometimes. Players like LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Mike Trout can draw thousands of fans to games and millions more on TV, and generate millions in merchandise sales. Doctors may save lives and LeBron James may just be playing a game, but how many kids do you know wanting to wear Dr. Smith’s stethoscope when they grow up? Didn’t think so.
There are two main reasons for an athlete’s lack of compensation. The first is youth: Athletes in the first few years of their careers are often the most grossly undercompensated—relatively speaking, of course. Rookie wage scales in the NFL and NBA cap even high first-rounders at “just” a few million dollars per season. The situation is even less player-friendly in baseball, where MLB arbitration rules make it virtually impossible for any player to make more than mid-six figures during their first three seasons.
Other athletes, looking for financial stability, undersell their talent by signing long-term, lower-salary deals early in their careers. These deals can lock a player to his team for several years, many of which could have been high-earning years in free agency. This is a strategy akin to selling your briefcase in “Deal or No Deal”: It assures that you’ll get something for your endeavor, but means you might miss out on an even bigger payday.
Obviously, making a few million dollars a year won’t put any pro athlete in danger of starving to death—with the exception of Latrell Sprewell, of course. But it’s still safe to say that some of these guys deserve raises. In order to determine just how big those raises should be, we’ve subtracted their actual salaries by what they should be making, based on their skill level and the highest salaries of other players at their respective positions. Here are the 15 most underpaid athletes of 2018, ranked by how many millions each athlete is underpaid.