Last week I was out driving and turned on a national sports talk radio show that I enjoy listening to when the opportunity presents itself. It’s a host whom I admire and respect, plus I can always count on it to be both entertaining as well as informative in terms of being on top of the current sports news that I need to know about.
If you’re a fan of the NFL, you know that last week was an important and busy time because free agency was in full swing. Yes, the draft, of course, is next month, and there’s no shortage of talking heads weighing in with their opinions on who will be drafted where as well as what they feel that various NFL teams should be doing relative to selections of college players.
If I were one of those student athletes, I’d have the university in the rearview mirror of an expensive sports car or SUV that I’m already shopping for.
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As I drove towards my destination, I heard the host talk about quarterback Sam Darnold being a bargain at 27.5 million dollars a year. He had a big year for the Minnesota Vikings and parlayed it into a big payday with the Seattle Seahawks.
I thought to myself, “If you move the decimal point over one place, it’s 2.75 million dollars – an amount that most people can’t imagine making in a lifetime. Yet here is an NFL player getting 27.5 million dollars PER YEAR and a talk show host calling that a bargain for the Seahawks.”
Meanwhile, I was talking to a singer on the telephone about a gig that they’d left. They asked me if I knew of anyone who might want to take it over. It’s a three-hour spot that pays 150 dollars. My immediate thought was that it would be tough to find anyone to do it for only fifty dollars an hour. In other words, performers who make a living doing live music are getting more than that. But guess what? They’re not making 27.5 million or even 2.75 million dollars a year – unless they are a household name.
And that’s where I have another issue.
With my weekly “Now Hear This Entertainment” podcast I have a front row seat to some absolutely dynamite performers. Yet they are having to work their fingers to the bone (almost literally for some guitar players), push their voice to the max for sometimes four hours (without a break, I’ve seen), travel and travel and travel by car, only to beg, borrow, and steal a couch to crash on.
Why is it okay for the NFL players who entertain us 17 Sundays out of the year to make obscene amounts of money, yet there are performers who have to do 217 dates a year just to make sure they can pay their bills and have a little left over to enjoy a little rest and relaxation when the opportunity presents itself?
I’m happy when a performer confides in me how much they got for a gig, meaning a tidy sum, but disappointed that those are often the exception to the rule. It shouldn’t just be weddings and corporate gigs, though.
Someone (singular or plural) is going to come for me on this and say that NFL players are sacrificing their bodies and point to the injuries that a lot of them suffer. And then I’ll point you to the performer who leaves crowds on the edge of their seat, wanting for more, drawing out emotion like a Hollywood blockbuster, and then going home and exhaling with, “I wonder what a lot of them would think if they knew I have a second job just to keep a steady paycheck coming in.”
The indie artists are going all out with a tip jar on stage, a QR code on the promotional signage they have on a table adjacent to where they’re performing, an easy to remember username for their Venmo or PayPal that they’re telling the audience about from the stage. And it’s all in the hopes of getting enough extra cash because of the amount they know the audience would be shocked to learn they’re getting from the venue.
I get it, by the way, restaurants and music venues and festivals and so on. Trust me. I’ve been at this for twenty-plus years now. I know there are two sides to every story, er, transaction. And I know that the NFL is a billion-dollar industry that can throw around 27.5-million-dollar annual contracts to one player. But we must find a resolution to the rich-get-richer model and give performers their due financially.
Athletes retire because of age or seeing their talent level start to drop off and no contract being offered. So, they walk away with a Brinks truck full of cash in the bank. Performers walk away because they are just too darn worn out from the paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle and resign themselves to settling into something with very different working conditions and even something called benefits. My heart goes out to them.
For twenty years I have been helping indie music artists, authors, actors, entrepreneurs, podcasters, filmmakers, small business owners, and more. What challenges are you having in your creator career that I can lend some insight to? Connect with me so you can take advantage of all my experience, and I can help and keep you moving forward.