Just wondering ... when will we see athletes taking salary cuts?

In this climate, where just about everyone in the media and other industries are feeling the pinch or getting pink slips, I haven't seen or read much about cuts in player salaries.
In regard to baseball, a-holes like Manny still think the sky is the limit.
But salary reductions have to happen soon, right?
They certainly can't grow at the pace that they have been.
We already know that golf and NASCAR are getting/going to get dinged by lack of automotive sponsorship. And attendance in baseball was down this past season (and I have to think the NBA and NHL arenas aren't filling up).
So when is it going to happen?

 

Salaries will go down when revenues go down. Sports salaries have always been very closely tied to revenues. Baseball revenue was $6.5 billion last season.

 

Economics 101. Supply and demand. Manny can ask for and get whatever he wants because of his freakish ability to hit a ball 500 feet regardless of circumstances. It's not like there are 100 would-be Mannys who coming straight out of college who can hit the just as far off the best pitchers in baseball and will do it cheap just to get the experience.

 

Very few athletes -- none? -- will take a voluntary cut on a guaranteed contract.

What's going to be interesting is to see if there's actually a pullback in the amount being made in offers on new deals.

 

I wonder if the Cubs may have to pull a Huizenga and dump salary.

 

Cubs are exempt from the Tribune bankruptcy filing, apparently.

 

Even if they wanted to, the players' unions would put the kibosh on that. See Rodriguez, Alex.

I could see revenues leveling off, but not falling for the major sports. People will still seek out sports as an escape in hard times — why baseball thrived in the 1930s, as did the movies.

 

Baseball attendance was down last season, but it was still the second highest in history -- 1.1 percent less than in 2007. And the sport had record revenue.

NBA attendance was down 2.1 percent in 2007-08, still the third highest attendance in the league's history.

NHL attendance was up 1.8 percent in 2007-08.
It's not like ballparks and owners' wallets are empty.

 

Actually, baseball was not thriving in the 1930s. The Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds both were in bankruptcy (correct me if I'm wrong), and the St. Louis Browns drew less than 1,000 people per game in 1939. Connie Mack had to sell off all his stars (for the second time) from the Philadelphia A's.

In the 1940s, with WWII, baseball thrived, in spite of the top players being in the military, because of what you said, people wanted to forget about the war for a while.

Back to the original topic, I could see NFL salaries go down, especially with the labor situation coming up and contracts not being guaranteed. The NHL may also see some economic issues with teams, since they overexpanded. For MLB, the top stars will still get what they want, but the middle class of free agent players may see a slow market. No player who already has a contract is going to give up what they already have.

 

and then the union would cry collusion and win, because there's always one owner stupid enough to pay A-Rod-type money

 

nhl salaries were cut en masse after the lockout.

 

The cream of the crop free agents will always get theirs.

The guys who are going to feel the pinch are those middle-of-the-road types, I think. A lot of teams, especially small market teams, are going to have to think long and hard about how they spend their money, player salaries included.