A previous version of this post first appeared in 2016.
I blogged previously about the history of some of the world championship hardware teams earn when they win a championship. I promised to follow up with the real reason all those players are smiling as they hoist those trophies: their financial bonuses.
According to various sources, the winners of Super Bowl L (50, but as a former Latin student, I'm going old school there) won $97,000.00 each. That's right. Every player on the Denver Broncos roster earned more for winning that game than many people earn in a year. The Panthers each received $49,000.00 for losing it. That will pay for a lot of tissues for wiping away the tears on the plane ride home.
Ninety-seven grand is very grand indeed, but here's the kicker (pun intended): the Super Bowl bonus is literally pocket change for most of the players. The average player salary in the NFL is over $2 million per year. The regular season consists of 16 games, so that works out to about $125,000.00 per game. Teams who reach the Super Bowl have also received bonuses every time they advance in the post-season, so the total bonus take for the champs is closer to $165,000.00 per player. That doesn't include the ring each player will receive after several months of design and manufacture. The rings for the 2015 champs, the New England Patriots, are valued at $36,500.00 each.
Salaries are just the tip of the income iceberg for many professional athletes. Endorsements are where the real money is. Peyton Manning is not only the master of the endorsements game. He's an expert in product placement. Some estimate his mention of Budweiser products in his post-game interviews to be worth billions to the company, which trickles back down to him in the form of profits at the two Anheuser-Busch distributorships in which he owns a stake. And that doesn't even include the Papa John's and Nationwide contracts and his latest entertainment ventures. (Come to think of it, I'm surprised he didn't deliver part of his canned Super Bowl speech to the tune of the Nationwide jingle.) Estimates of the elder Manning's annual endorsement income is $12,000,000.00. That's twelve million if all those zeroes are starting to make your eyes spin. Remember, that's on top of his 5-year, $96 million contract for actually playing football. That's just over $19 million per year, so it's more than the endorsements, but with the endorsements, 350-lb linemen are not threatening to separate your head from your shoulders on every play.
In the early years, football players were paid per game. Player salaries fluctuated wildly based on perceived skill as well as the budgets of the various teams. The first player to play under season-long contract was Red Grange in 1926. He was paid $100,000.00 for a 19 game season with the Chicago Bears. That may not seem like much compared to the numbers I was throwing around earlier. It's certainly less than what many players earn per game today. But factoring in inflation over the last 90 years, that works out to about $1,300,000.00 in today's money. Not bad, considering he had to wear a helmet that looks like it was inspiration for a Coneheads skit.
The players union made progress in standardizing salaries starting in the 1970s. Thanks to the popularity of the game, broadcast rights, ticket prices, and licensing revenue, there's a lot of green to go around for the players who get the hooey knocked out of them every Sunday for our entertainment. From the look of their celebration dances (and their bank account balances), they're enjoying it as much as we are.
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