So, you’ve got $50 million to spend
The sporting world would be your Powerball oyster if you won big tomorrow night. Liam Hyslop ponders the options.
With $50 million up for grabs in tomorrow’s Lotto draw, it got us thinking what a sports nut could do with that sort of money.
They would almost certainly be richer than every current All Black, be able to buy the Wellington Phoenix, and have nearly as much money as Kiwi NBA player Steven Adams (emphasis on the nearly).
So what would $50m get you in sport, and where would it place you on the sports richlist?
In 2018, All Blacks captain Kieran Read was understood to be the first All Black earning more than $1m per season.
With Beauden Barrett’s Blues contract loaded with extra money from the Super Rugby franchise, he’s expected to be on a fair chunk more than $1m per season. With his range of endorsements, he’d be pushing a fair bit more than that.
But even then, with $50m sitting in your bank account, you would have more money than any All Black going around. You’d earn more this year than all the All Blacks’ World Cup squad combined.
If you put the money into a bank account at three per cent interest, you’d take in $1.5m in interest, but would lose about $500,000 of that to tax, still putting you in the upper echelons of rugby earners.
Now this next one is impossible, but say you’re a real introvert – you hate being around large crowds – and wanted to watch an All Blacks test live, all by yourself. You could easily buy all 35,000-plus tickets in Sky Stadium in Wellington (say at an average of $200 a pop, that’s only $7m) for their match against the Wallabies in August.
Maybe you’re not a fan of the oval ball code, but Sky Stadium might hold a special place in your heart as a Wellington Phoenix fan.
Given the going rate for an A-League club of about A$15m (NZ$15.6m) these days, you could take over the club and run it for about 30 years or so given the club loses at least a few hundred thousand dollars every year.
At least the league covers the wage bill there, which is capped at A$3.2m (NZ$3.33m) per year, so you could splash the cash to bring your favourite player to
Wellington as a marquee.
Just don’t expect to sign Cristiano Ronaldo. First, you couldn’t afford the transfer fee, and then you wouldn’t be able to pay him, given he’s on €30m (NZ$51m) per year at Juventus.
All Whites captain Winston Reid might be a better option. He’s got a long-term contract, but is valued at about $6m. You’d then need to at least match his yearly salary of $7.5m.
Perhaps football isn’t your thing. Maybe you’re a netball fan. Taking over Netball New
Zealand probably isn’t a viable long-term option given they have revenue of more than $19m per year, and it might not even be possible.
The Silver Ferns are largely professional, earning more than $100,000 per year, so there isn’t a lot of work to do there.
But maybe you’d like to be take control of the Netball World Cup and stage it in New Zealand every time. The International Netball Federation generally has a yearly budget of $600,000, so you could make them a sponsorship offer they couldn’t refuse on the proviso that peak netball tournaments would only be played here.
If cricket is more your go, then you could easily bankroll a domestic team, particularly on the women’s side.
Women’s domestic cricketers earn just $1350 a season compared to between $27,000 and $54,000 for the men, who also earn match fees of $800 for the Ford Trophy, $575 for T20 Super Smash and $1650 for Plunket Shield.
If you were looking to boost the women’s game to equal the men’s, the 90-odd women’s domestic cricketers would need to share at least $2.31m between them each year out of your pocket.
In international sport, your $50m won’t go very far.
In cricket, you could bankroll an Indian Premier League team at the $19m salary cap, but you would want to be one of the popular teams to try to rake back that outlay through sponsorships and gate takings.
Your $50m would not rate highly in the salaries of the sporting elite, as highlighted by Ronaldo previously.
In terms of Kiwis, you would be up there.
You’ll never match Adams, who earns about $40m per season playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA. His career earnings just from his salary have already eclipsed $130m.
But few other Kiwi sports stars would be able to match the $50m, in terms of yearly salaries.
IndyCar driver Scott Dixon was understood to be on about $6m from Chip Ganassi Racing, with his salary supplemented by endorsements.
Most of New Zealand’s dearly departed All Blacks won’t be able to match your wealth.
Dan Carter was reportedly the highest-paid in 2019, taking home about $2m from his salary at the Kobelco Steelers in Japan.
So you could lay claim to a financial place in New Zealand’s sporting elite, but what money can’t do is buy you a place on the field.
At least dreams are free.