Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Selig Puts Wall Street Bonus Indiscretions To Shame

As we try and rationalize how investment banking employees earned bonuses while their companies lost billions of dollars, I ran across this article from ESPN, stating that my favorite shoulder-shrugging impotent commissioner Bud Selig made more money than all but three MLB players in 2007, with a salary of $17.5M.

NEW YORK -- Baseball commissioner Bud Selig made more than all but three of his sport's players in 2007.

Selig received a raise of about $3 million to nearly $17.5 million that year, according to Major League Baseball's latest tax return.

His compensation was listed at $17,470,491 for the 12 months that ended Oct. 31, 2007, according to the return, which is available at guidestar.org. That was up from $14,515,071 in the prior 12 months.

MLB's contribution to Selig in its benefit plan was $461,540, an increase from $400,999 in the previous return. He got $422,590 in expense account and other allowances, up from $140,603 in the previous fiscal year.

His total compensation adding benefits and expenses was $18.35 million.

Selig's pay was first reported by the Sports Business Journal.

In 2007, the only players who received higher cash compensation were a trio of the Yankees: Alex Rodriguez at $23 million (plus $4 million deferred), Derek Jeter at $22 million (including a $2 million payment as part of his signing bonus) and Jason Giambi at $21.5 million (including a $500,000 payment as part of his signing bonus). Roger Clemens fell just short at $17,442,637.

An accompanying sidebar lists the other major sporting commissioner's salaries: Roger Goodell of the NFL: $11.2M; David Stern of the NBA: $10M (estimated); Gary Bettman of the NHL: $5.6M. Selig is obviously astronomically higher than any of his peers.

Contrast this salary information with a question asked in ESPN.com's latest Fan Poll (taken from the most recent issue of the magazine; no link):

Yes, I approve of the job this commissioner is doing:
Roger Goodell: 80%
David Stern: 62%
Gary Bettman: 55%
Bud Selig: 42%

42% approval rating. That's less than half of the voters, for those of you who are counting. And $17.5M. Wow.

4 comments:

Wesley Vento said...

Bud has done nothing but make the owners a ton of money in the past 4 or 5 years, so it stands to reason that he'd reap some benefits. How much money did McCourt make that same year? Or Steinbrenner or any of the other owners? Selig will go down in baseball history for a couple of things: a) prolification of steriod use in the 90s b) cancelling the 1994 World Series (the last season the Montreal Expos were ever relevant) c)calling the 2002 ALL Star Game a tie and subsequently creating the most assenine rule in all of American Sports. What he won't be remembered for is the drastic increases in baseball revenue he helped create, attendance increases league-wide, and introducing revenue sharing among all teams.

Love him or hate him, I am of the opinion that he made baseball better overall when it could have gone completely into the crapper after the strike. Is there a harder job in sports than Commissioner of Major League Baseball?

QuadSevens said...

Being a GM and having to deal with Scott Boras might be close.

Wesley Vento said...

I want to choke Scott Boras with some of those fake Manny dreds.

Alex Cora said...

I heard about this yesterday on the scott van pelt show on ESPN radio. SVP echoed what HLCK said earlier about what he will be remembered for during his era. What it really means is that I need to buy a baseball team and reap some of these benefits.