Stock Market for Star Athletes is Here

Most professional sports are already organized as corporations in which stocks are held in private or by a wider public. An interesting article on Yahoo Finance brings forth the argument that a market for creating a market for trading in professional athletes in the same way as stocks are traded may be established soon. Essentially therefore, this market would involve trading stocks in professional athletes by taking positions on the anticipated performance during their careers. Since trading in stocks now is already about making judgment about the performance of certain corporations in competition with others.

As the article states, an athlete would trade up to say 20% of future performance earnings to a trust, which would in turn sell stock based on their value to the public. As one would expect, the value of that stock would fluctuate with the performance of the athlete.

I have no doubt that the athletes whose stocks would be most traded would be those playing in the NBA, NFL, and soccer leagues in Europe. However, having just watched the London Marathon yesterday, I am convinced that buying into the future of the less well known Kenyan athlete would represent very good returns. While that is pretty obvious, I am interested in finding out how data will be readily utilized to disaggregate the contributions of athletes in team sports such as soccer.