Major League Baseball (MLB) salaries are above double that of the National Football League (NFL), Major League Soccer (MLS), and National Hockey League (NHL). What has led to this disparity?
According to Jose Brito—Baseball fan for 50 years, self-titled stats guru—the reason for this pay disparity lies in that “baseball, as an organized league, has been around for so much longer than NHL, MLS, or even the NFL. There has been much more time for [salary negotiations] to increase. We can see this trend in other sports, usually correlating to the amount of viewership and popularity of that sport.”
This trend also seems to follow when taking into account highest paying contracts/salaries. Zach Schilling—average baseball fan and skyline student—comments, “Due to there being no salary cap, the players will get paid as much as the [organization] wants to pay them.”
An example of this is baseball player Juan Soto’s 15-year, $765 million contract with the New York Mets he signed in December 2024.
But why is it that baseball player top contracts are so much larger than other American sports organizations? Brito says, “The organization are quite wealthy; also, baseball contracts are very long, comparatively to other sports.”
The average MLB contract spans 10 years, double that of the average NBA (National Basketball Association) and NFL contract.
This is fairly unknown to the public, with Schilling as an example saying, “Oh man, I had no clue! I thought when players get to the big leagues they need to prove themselves, so they stay on shorter contracts and move around on shorter contracts as well.”
On top of this, the MLB—unlike the NFL—has guaranteed contracts, meaning that even if a player gets injured part way through the contract, they still have to be paid in full for what their contract is worth. “Guaranteed contracts were first introduced into baseball because of the MLBPA[Major League Baseball Players Association],” says Brito. “The MLBPA is one of the strongest unions in sports.”
As so, one of the unique positions that MLBPA has put the MLB in is that there is no hard/soft salary cap on contracts. This is what made Soto’s and Shohei Ohtani’s seven-hundred million dollar contracts possible.
This is not to say there are not any limits on this kind of spending. The MLB has put in place a luxury tax. Brito explains, “The luxury tax is just if a team spends over a certain amount of money, they are taxed greater on the amount they over spend. This does not directly affect the amount a contract can be but sets a limit on how much a team should spend.”
There are more strict limitations on this, especially in the NFL, with them having strict limits on how much a contract can be. Brito says, “Maybe in the future the MLB will begin to start putting in place restrictions and salary caps like the NBA, but for right now, rumours of the 1 billion dollar contract are in the air.”
