Getting paid, and paying to get there
In sport and entertainment, the value and the cost of talent are part of an equation that is constantly being rearranged.
Writing checks
Do you know what you’re worth?
That may be an awkward opener for a free newsletter. It’s also a calculation that gets more complex all the time, in industries being redefined by who is getting paid and how.
No one in the US is currently making scripted entertainment. Earlier this month, the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) confirmed its first walkout since 2008, after six failed weeks of negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
New episodes of talk shows and Saturday Night Live are suspended, with delays set to be visible elsewhere, including streaming platforms and cinemas, over the next year or so. Traditional TV channels will revert to unscripted reality shows, repeats, imports and, in time, more desperate measures to fill schedules.
The WGA strike captures showbusiness in flux, against a familiar backdrop of long-term economic realignment.
The last two major disputes, in 1985 and 2007 to 2008, were about porting an existing settlement to newer media. A writer working on an episode of television is paid whenever that episode airs or reruns, essentially getting their cut of the ads sold against it. That doesn’t directly translate to an on-demand context so in 1985, WGA members campaigned for their piece of VHS sales; 15 years ago, they fought for a share of digital distribution rights.
This time, however, things have moved on. Streaming has transformed the US broadcast ecosystem. Its model depends on volume and the user experience presses old and new content flat, which can make 30-year-old Friends or Seinfeld as valuable to Netflix and co as any buzzy new hit.
At first, companies spent heavily to distinguish their services and build user bases, and were often cagey about who was watching what. Now, they are cutting costs to reassure shareholders in the face of cheaper competition and expensive credit. The creator-friendly largesse of the mid to late 2010s is evaporating; shows are often disappeared without warning.
And streaming also changed how US television is made. More and different shows are produced but with much shorter seasons – six to ten episodes instead of the old network TV standard of 22. Writers can get work but few enjoy anything like the steady incomes or linear career paths that existed before.
“If people think how stressful it is to do a job search one time, imagine having to do that several times a year,” [Abbott Elementary writer Brittani] Nichols said.
“People aren’t becoming television writers to become rich and famous. We do it because we like writing, we’re funny, and this was a path to this middle-class life, and now that’s being ripped away from us. It’s not a sustainable career.”
So while WGA members want better residuals from streaming platforms, they also need new standards that support a robust, practical model for the future. The content business is bigger and more valuable, yet with a less reliable path to profit. And from the union’s perspective, studio leadership has captured the value and the scale, and passed the uncertainty back to the writers.
All the while, creative caution looms overhead. Then there is AI: possible muse, possible plagiarist. Notably, the WGA wants regulation of generative AI use in the writing process, and of copyrighted scripts in training those systems. This feels as much about precedent as the present ability of ChatGPT to draft screenplays or episodes of a sitcom.
AI systems based on large language models don’t generate fresh ideas – they reorganise and repurpose existing information. But in a Hollywood where so much new output is based on the characters and worlds of existing, studio-owned IP – with actors’ performances already augmented through AI visuals to rejuvenate those franchises – that begins to look less like a limiting factor and more like a logical endpoint.
None of this is to say that original stories will disappear from audience view. The equivalents of Apple, for example, with its capacious pockets, or A24, with its taste for the zeitgeist and marketing savvy, will always want to position themselves alongside distinctive voices. But at an industrial level, this is a pivotal moment.
Not just cricket
Back in 2008, roughly when WGA members returned from the picket lines, the Indian Premier League arrived. Film stars in the owners’ box and sports stars in the middle brought recognisable appeal to its brand-new city-based franchise teams, competing in the still quite new T20 format, whose matches clocked in around the three-hour length of a night at the movies.
For a few weeks’ commitment, cricketers got contracts that dwarfed anything available before. And the outlay has been returned to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and its franchisees with handsome interest: the $6.2 billion worth of media rights deals signed in 2022 are the second-richest in sport on a per-game basis, after the NFL. The first season under those agreements is setting viewing records.
That growth has had an ironic consequence. A few weeks ago, cricket writer Tim Wigmore explained that despite their relative wealth in the sport, IPL players were now much lower-paid as a proportion of revenue than their peers in football’s Premier League and the US major leagues.
The dynamics, of course, are not the same. The worldwide contest for footballing talent is intense; the sport’s laddered rewards encourage risky spending. In North America, salary caps are tied to league income through collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) – the benefits of security hard-won in a system where it is talent, rather than teams, that climbs the pyramid.
The picture in the IPL is likely to change. Tom Moffat, who heads the global cricketers’ union, followed up in the Telegraph earlier this month.
“Players love playing in the IPL, but there’s no doubt that if you look at it comparatively, as a percentage of overall revenue that the league generates, overall player payments are well behind other analogous sporting leagues,” Tom Moffat, chief executive of the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations, told Telegraph Sport this week.
“The IPL has changed the game and the BCCI has done a fantastic job – it’s one of the leading sporting competitions in the world and that is reflected in the per game value it generates.
“We look forward to continuing to see the IPL and WPL be successful and to players being paid fairly and proportionately to their contribution to the success of these and other leagues around the world.”
There are two things to filter through that measured tone. The IPL is no longer just a premium cultural export – it is a centre of power. The creation of a Women’s Premier League, with life-altering pay packets for its stars, added to that gravitational pull.
And that power dwindles if the IPL is outflanked by a bigger spender who can dilute its concentration of talent. Last month, Australian newspaper The Age reported that Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is exploring opportunities in franchise cricket. This has included talks with the ICC and BCCI on a formal collaboration but that outcome is by no means certain.
This is all happening as IPL team owners broaden their base of influence. They have taken their brands into South Africa, the UAE and the USA, with the expectation that players will soon be offered annual contracts to represent multiple franchise affiliates through the year.
At the same time, according to ESPNCricinfo, the International Cricket Council (ICC) is considering a proposal that would revise its distribution of central revenues even further in India’s favour next month. One model to be discussed at its next meeting in June places more emphasis on each national market’s ‘commercial contribution’: the BCCI would get a 38.5% share of the ICC's annual earnings, currently $231 million of a $600 million total.
In that scenario, even the wealthiest countries would be less able to pay internationals at a level that kept up with the IPL. Some might continue to pursue rival competitions, perhaps backed by some form of private investment, but the majority would end up doing more to accommodate IPL interests.
Either way, the notion of international cricket as the game’s technical and financial peak is hurtling towards obsolescence and that will have a profound impact. In most countries, talent pathways will be further redirected towards the richest leagues. World Cup tournaments with full-strength teams could appear as isolated peaks in the calendar, rather than in a tapestry of bilateral series.
The fate of five-day Test matches, a source of eternal speculation, is another intriguing point here. There remain fans who want to watch them and stars who want to take part. Manoj Badale, one of the owners of the IPL’s Rajasthan Royals, recently told the BBC Tailenders podcast that he expects Tests to become rarer but still prestigious events in the next few years – perhaps annual occasions akin to Wimbledon.
But whatever it turns into, the longer format will need cricketers worthy of the challenge.
Where will they come from?
Heavy rotation
Lionel Messi is one of those athletes who stands apart.
Back in December, at the Fifa World Cup final, the Emir of Qatar broke with footballing convention to drape the victorious Argentina captain in a bisht – a ceremonial robe denoting his now-exalted status.
It was a gesture that provoked debate in the moment and, months later, must seem distant to those at its centre. In May, Messi was suspended by Qatari-owned PSG after returning late from his duties as a Visit Saudi ambassador.
The 35-year-old will leave France in the summer and fevered reports insisted he would join his great rival, Cristiano Ronaldo, on a nine-figure deal in the Saudi Pro League. His representatives have moved to dampen speculation but it is not hard to see why so many found that rumour persuasive.
Messi, like Ronaldo, would be a magnet for domestic and global attention. Like Ronaldo, he is also the captain of a country campaigning to host the 2030 World Cup. Saudi Arabia is mooted to be preparing a bid for the tournament alongside Egypt and Greece, with no prizes for guessing who the banker would be.
However discomfiting the prospect, that free-spending recruitment project will continue. For all that, though, when it comes to the wider transfer market, those manoeuvres may be more noise than signal.
To really understand how football might be about to change, you need to look to another Gulf-funded project. The Abu Dhabi-owned Manchester City are one win away from their fifth Premier League title in six years and will contest FA Cup and Uefa Champions League finals in early June.
City’s use of their abundant resources under Pep Guardiola is instructive. While they boast marquee names like Kevin de Bruyne and the terrifying Erling Haaland, their squad is designed to share the physical burden and peak in the defining period of the season. With two Premier League games remaining, second-placed Arsenal had six outfield players with over 2,800 on-field minutes on the clock. City had one.
The City model is an obvious outlier – with other alleged caveats – but it remains a benchmark. Certainly, it is an example that the Saudi-backed Newcastle United might try and emulate.
And whatever means other clubs find to build squads, it is very much squads they will be building. Men’s and women’s teams will play more matches in the years ahead, as the likes of Fifa and Uefa stretch hard to maximise their media rights return. So more players will be used and with five substitutions now standard at the top level, more can be.
Elite coaches prefer to root their strategies in collective familiarity and well-defined individual roles. Still, a rule that allows half the team to be replaced every match will have far-reaching effects.
Over time, it will change the marketplace. Intelligent, versatile and reliable footballers who can adapt to complex systems should be in high demand. But so might role players with more limited but specialised skillsets: ‘closers’ whose aptitude for crossing, stopping and poaching are useful in specific competitive situations.
That could drive up player turnover as coaches seek shorter-term solutions for evolving tactical problems. It could send professionals of similar quality down dramatically different career paths. The value of players to fans, to selling clubs, to partners – it would all move again in the shuffle.
Sport and entertainment are where talent meets opportunity. Just not always in the same place, on the same terms.
Eoin Connolly is a sports industry writer, editor and presenter. He is also the editorial director at Trippant.