++ [ originally posted by Elnur_E65 ] ++
I was just discussing this issue with my friends yesterday.
Howcome amounts of money generated by US sports are so high compared to european football?
I mean... baseball players sign contracts for 200 million dollors and stuff, while top players in Seria A don't even get $10 million a year.
Local advertising and television/radio contracts play a huge role in that. Marketing, sales of jerseys and paraphenalia, and don't forget the National television contracts for such sports as the NFL, as evidenced by a nearly 1 billion dollar a year deal that the NFL has with both CBS and Fox.
Also, teams don't have to go and pay ridiculous amounts of money to go and acquire players, because the majority of the teams players are brought in through the draft and nurtured through either college (Football and Basketball) or a minor league development system (Baseball and Hockey). Only in Free Agency do teams spend a lot of money to try and acquire out-of-contract players, and they don't have to pay the clubs, they only pay the respective players contracts, that's a big difference right there. There are so many reasons why as to a country like the US can have 4 major sports, have great attendance figures and have the majority of the teams still have a healthy profit, but these are some of the reasons.