The news of Shohei Ohtani signing a 10-year, $700 million contract with the LA Dodgers spread like wildfire. Regarded as one of the best baseball players ever, Ohtani’s move to LA altered the record books. The overall value of $700 million eclipses Patrick Mahomes’ 10-year $450 million contract by a long distance. He became the first player in North American sports history to sign a contract that is valued at $70 million per year.
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MLB Insider Héctor Gómez broke down the value of the contract in multiple ways. Since an MLB season has 162 games, he divided the overall worth of the contract by the number of games to get a per-game figure. If we adopt that method, the two-way baseball star will earn $432,099 per game.
Considering the largest per-game contracts in the NBA, the value of Ohtani’s contract still pales in comparison. Compared to MLB, the NBA has 82 games, which is almost half, therefore the value of contracts per game is higher when we look at the top contracts.
Perennial superstar LeBron James is currently in the first year of his two-year, $99,023,288 contract. This season, he is going to earn $47,607,350, while next season he will bag $51,415,938. Dividing his next season’s contract value by 82 games, he is going to earn $627,023 per game. This is almost $200,000 ahead of Ohtani’s per-game valuation.
Apart from LBJ, 34 other athletes are going to make more money than Ohtani if we adhere to this per-game earnings model. Next season, Stephen Curry will top the per-year contract number, thanks to his $55,761,216 salary. In terms of per-game valuation, he is set to earn $680,014.
Even emerging superstars Anthony Edwards, Tyrese Haliburton, and LaMelo Ball are going to earn more than the seasoned baseball phenom in terms of per-game evaluation. They are going to earn $35,500,000 each, next season, which translates to $432, 926 a game, just a whisker ahead of Ohtani’s per-game valuation.
Shohei Ohtani’s contract still stands tall
Compared to the NBA, supermax deals for NFL and MLB superstars run for a higher number of years. In recent years, five years is the highest duration for an NBA contract. Whereas, MLB contracts can run past even the 10-year mark. Still, another form of LeBron James-Shohei Ohtani salary comparison paints an interesting picture.
From the 2003-04 season to the current 2023-24 season, James has earned $479 million in two decades. On the flip side, Ohtani is set to earn more than $700 million years in just a decade.
Taking into account the inflation and economic variables, the value of max contracts has more than doubled in just the last 10 years, raising the bar of salary figures. Patrick Mahomes’ 10-year $450 million contract is a major example of that. In the MLB, Mike Trout’s 12-year, $426.5 million contract figures just below Mahomes’ contract in overall value. On the flip side, the biggest NHL contract is Alex Ovechkin’s 13-year, $124 million.
Ovechkin’s contract is different from the deals listed here because it finished in 2020 and was signed more than 15 years ago. Meanwhile, the NBA saw record-breaking deals this year and the supermax contracts finally broke the $60 million per year ceiling.
Jaylen Brown’s five-year, $300 million deal set the precedent and then the subsequent extensions signed by Anthony Davis and Giannis Antetokounmpo also went past the $60 million per year mark.
