Does money in sports weaken the spirit of sports?
By oldchem1
@oldchem1 (8132)
June 4, 2010 10:19am CST
Do you agree that the huge amounts of money that are now offered in sports world often causes athletes to abandon their home countries.
Or that with professional sports players money has taken over from the love of the game or staying loyal to your team or fans.
Or do you think that athletes deserve all the money they earn because big companies are willing to pay. Then with these high payments come high expectations on athletes -personally and professionally - and they have to subject themselves to risk on the playing field.
5 responses
@mario_stevens (6971)
• Malaysia
4 Jun 10
i personally think that sports was much more sporting when there was not much money being thrown around.. players played for pride & passion, with their hearts & souls, while expending their sweat & tears and sometimes blood to gain the glory for their countries and themselves.
now with sports being very 'professional' and with the amounts of money being paid out, it seems that the only target that sportsman chase is the big payday when they go professional and win games..
whatever happened to sports being sporting..
@mario_stevens (6971)
• Malaysia
4 Jun 10
and it's just one of many types of sports that is doing this to the players..it changes the whole mantra of a 'level playing field' 
@monz143 (6)
• Philippines
5 Jun 10
I believe it is also justifiable for the athletes to get money out of sports. If we look deeper trough it, they consider their sports as job, a work. They were trained to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes out of it, just like other jobs. So i believe they should also be given money as a form of salary. Coz it has been proven trough research, that money, in a form of salary, could motivate the person to perform better.
@vivekrumy (147)
• India
5 Jun 10
Yes, I agree that money does spoil the spirit of sports. As you can see these days players which are paid more are considered to be with more talent and those paid less are thought of someone with 'NO' talent. This creates a riff between players and also affects the gameplay.
As for example you can consider the case of the coming world cup , many of the club players are not playing for their respective country's which is due to injuries in the 'highly paid' club matches. So this is somehow inter related to money and it does weaken spirit of sports.
@sender621 (14893)
• United States
4 Jun 10
Sports used to be all about the sport. Now it seems to be more about money and endorsing products. This is especially true of professional sports. Sure, everyone likes to make money doing something that they love. The spirit and victory of the sport should come above all else.
@kukueye (1759)
• Malaysia
4 Jun 10
I guess the fans are big part of the equation also.Some countries really benefit from the export players.Just said like South Korea soccer players are in UK soccer EPL , and also China basketballs players are in NBL and such.THey knowledge learn they can pass it on to their countries during internation games.Like the coming world soccer cup in Afrika all the export players are returning to their country teams. So of these players also can improve and built their sport in their local country and such.If a person is skillful and people are willing to paid your to use that skill and develop it why not? If the sport person is corrupted in whether he is poor or rich he is still corrupted by pride greed and such sooner or later.
