Union dues for professional athletes?

Question

Does anyone know how much the dues are for the unions in the major professional sports leagues in the United States (NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL)? I'm curious as to whether that sort of information is available to the public.

Answer 1

Good question. The only story I could find with an amount is for the NFL, which states that all players kick in $5,000 each. So that's times 53 players times 32 teams, so it adds up in a hurry.

Plus, the association makes all sorts of money from the licensing area, such as trading cards, etc. So it doesn't do badly at all.

I know in baseball, the players do quite well on licensing fees; it was something like $85,000 each more than a decade ago and it's certainly gone up from there. There's probably some sort of payment, but it's a good investment. By the way, Kevin Millar of the Orioles never joined the union, so he doesn't get such money. In fact, on a t-shirt with the roster of the Red Sox of 2004, Millar wasn't listed.

Answer 2

The players union is a group of highly paid professional con artist that are continually successful in making it appear that the athletes are being abused by team owners in order to extract ever higher salaries.