SHOULD AFL players be paid more than they currently make?<\/p>\n
Collingwood veteran Scott Pendlebury is one current player that believes his cohort is heavily underpaid.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the Ball Magnets Podcast with teammate Tom Mitchell and NBA star Josh Giddey, Pendlebury suggested AFL players were underpaid given league executives are paid more than the competition\u2019s top players.<\/p>\n
While AFL players earn far more than the average worker, Pendlebury believes the higher-profile players need to be paid more as they can\u2019t live a normal life in cities like Melbourne.<\/p>\n
With players in the NBA earning 51 per cent of revenue and AFL players earning just 28 per cent of their competition\u2019s revenue, Pendlebury believes it\u2019s time for players to earn a bigger piece of the pie.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still think the players in our game and the coaching staff and that are heavily underpaid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone will go, \u2018Oh, you get paid so much as players\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the executive team in the AFL are the highest paid people in the game, which is fine, but there’s no other league in the world where the exec team are paid more than the players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think of a guy like Nick Daicos or Dustin Martin, they cannot live a normal life in Melbourne.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response to Pendlebury, Kane Cornes credited the Magpie for also suggesting that football department staff should be paid more before asking David King how much he thinks players should earn.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said this, he’s not going to get much sympathy from the footy fans out there,\u201d Cornes said on SEN Breakfast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m glad he mentioned [the coaches] on first listen, I didn’t hear him reference the coaches because I’m big on this.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe soft cap spend has been decimated and hasn’t recovered like the players\u2019 [salary cap] and every other aspect of the game has [since COVID].<\/p>\n
\u201cThe role that the coaches, and even the medical staff, we’ve lost some great doctors in the game as a result of this and they’re really important as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that’s got to increase, they’ve been smashed and haven’t recovered, and the players probably have with their wage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat’s the right percentage? It’s different to the NBA because it’s privately owned and there are all sorts of different aspects of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
While King said he wasn\u2019t sure exactly how much revenue players should earn, he does feel that list sizes are too big and the top earners should be making more than $2 million a season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t know that the number, I don’t know the answer to that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut what I do know is that the lists are too big, and the top end of talent are not getting paid or remunerated as they should be.<\/p>\n
\u201cDustin Martin over the last five years should be on $2 million a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2022, just three players earned more than $1.2 million a season while no players reportedly earn more than $1.5 million.<\/p>\n