By Cuauhtemoc Hinojosa and Josue Ponce
@redlineproject
Put yourself in Juan Soto’s shoes as he signed one of the biggest sports contracts valued at around $765 million for 15 years, which includes a $75 million signing bonus. This is one of the biggest contracts signed by any professional athlete. Three-quarters of a billion dollars for playing the sport you enjoyed since childhood.
Pro sports teams increasingly invest substantial amounts of money in players. They include a guaranteed money factor, which is the amount the player is guaranteed, regardless of whether any incentive bonuses were met or not. Additionally, contracts can include clauses such as the no-trade clause, as seen in the NBA, which specifically states that the team is prohibited from trading the player.
While you might hear of a no-trade clause, depending on the league, it is very uncommon for the clause to be included in the contract. For example, in the NBA, only two players have active no-trade clauses in their contracts, according to Hoopsrumors: LeBron James and Damian Lillard.
While it is uncommon in the NBA, a league with a higher number of players who have no-trade clauses is the National Hockey League. According to The Stars, approximately 30% of the players in the league have a no-trade clause included in their contract.
While not everyone is eligible for the no-trade clause, certain requirements must be met to qualify, including being at least 27 years of age or having participated in a minimum of seven NHL seasons.
The structure of professional contracts varies from league-to-league. For example, NBA contracts are larger and have more guaranteed money compared to those in the NFL, which are more bonus-based and have less guaranteed money.
Comparing both leagues, in the NBA, currently, Jason Tatum from the Boston Celtics holds the biggest guaranteed contract, which is valued at $314 million over five years, compared to Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, which guaranteed him $141 million, but the 10-year contract is valued at $450 million if all incentives and bonuses are met.
Major League Soccer is somewhat different. Unlike the NBA and NFL, where the teams themselves are the ones who employ the players, the MLS technically employs the players, and the clubs just get the rights to the players.
Along with that, contracts are significantly smaller in the MLS for star player Lionel Messi, who is guaranteed to earn $20.4 million a year with a base salary of $12 million. Messi’s contract is a unique one because with his contract, he has equity in the current club he plays for, Inter Miami, which is a long-term investment that could earn him more money in the future.
When hearing such gigantic amounts of money, it’s impossible not to think this is the dream, and many times these are the reactions from fans and people outside of sports. Earning millions just for playing a sport sounds like an easy task, but beyond the money, signing a contract can often mean losing privileges or taking on tasks that go far beyond simply practicing a sport.
In most sports, signing a contract means meeting media expectations such as attending press conferences, photo sessions or interviews. In other words, the player loses control of their image. The player is also required to play an excessive number of games that can affect their physical performance, which can result in serious injuries.
In U.S. sports, media duties are not optional. They are explicitly written into the collective bargaining agreements, or CBAs (every association has a different one), which are the binding contracts between leagues and players’ unions. Every major league, the NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS and NHL, includes mandatory media availability clauses, meaning athletes are legally obligated to cooperate with press conferences, interviews and promotional events.
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Eduardo Aguillera-Guillen, a former player with the Chicago House, a soccer club that formerly competed at the professional level before moving to semi-pro, talked about the media expectations.
“The media expectation wasn’t that bad because I wasn’t playing for a big club — but you still have to fulfill those expectations if you sign a contract,” Aguillera-Guillen said. “When you sign a contract, they inform you that you are authorizing them to use your image in the way they need it.”
Different players have been affected by these rules. For instance, former NFL player Marshawn Lynch once said, “I’m here so I won’t get fined,” during Super Bowl Media Day in 2015 because he was forced to attend a mandatory media session and was threatened with a $500,000 fine if he refused to appear. He even said years after that incident that he had been fined more than $1 million throughout his NFL career for not attending media sessions.
Another athlete financially affected by these rules is NBA player Kyrie Irving, who refused to speak to the media due to his distrust of how they can use his words against him. His silence cost him $25,000.
Chicago Fire prospect goalkeeper Bryan Dowd was asked if he believes that having to do media is fair compensation for the salary they earn.
Dowd said, “I do think that media requirements are fair considering everything involved. My job as an athlete is to essentially be an entertainer. My team playing in front of thousands of people in person and many more online is just another form of entertainment. With that being said, it makes sense that part of my requirement for receiving my salary is media things.”
While some players prefer not to speak to the media and get fined or fine loopholes, other professional athletes, such as Dowd, find it to be fair that they are required to do media since they are professionals and they have millions of fans out there that wish to hear their insight, possibly on a specific play or topic.
Although it’s not common, some contracts can even limit a player’s personal earnings. In soccer, Real Madrid requires keeping 50% of a player’s image rights, which directly affects income from sponsorships. This clause was one of the reasons Kylian Mbappé hesitated to sign with the club.
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Timeline: Controversial Moments Regarding Professional Contracts
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This shows how a professional contract can affect an athlete’s finances in addition to limiting their free will and freedom to decide what they do and do not want to do.
Another major issue with professional contracts, one that grows more serious every year, is the excessive number of games players are exposed to, and this is something both players and coaches openly criticize whenever they can. Sports are a business, and most of the time the business benefits those who control it. Many fans even support the business side by enjoying more and more games for entertainment, without looking beyond that. But entertainment and business become a problem when athletes’ physical integrity is at risk.
The problem with playing so many games is that the human body cannot withstand that much effort, and professional athletes are already pushing their bodies to the limit by simply dedicating themselves to their sport. Adding even more physical and competitive load leads to injuries.
Injuries can end a player’s career or limit their performance both collectively and individually. For example, the current Champions League winner Paris Saint-Germain and the runner-up of the Club World Cup played this past summer has had most of its players injured throughout the start of the 2025–26 season and hasn’t been able to show what the team is capable of this year.
Adding even more physical and competitive load leads to injuries Aguillera-Guillen also described how demanding schedules affect players at lower levels.
“It’s hard to perform at the highest level when you have several games in the same week,” he said. “Sometimes you don’t recover enough or you have muscle discomfort.”
This is a problem across all sports. Soccer players like Rodri, winner of the 2024 Ballon d’Or, who spent most of the 2025 season injured, have spoken negatively about the exhausting schedule and how players cannot perform at their highest level for more than 60 matches in a season.
According to ESPN, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr said he is “very concerned” that the 82-game schedule is contributing to a rise in soft-tissue injuries.
Aguillera-Guillen also pointed out the constant pressure players feel to keep their place on the team.
“You always have to be good all the time because there’s always pressure,” Aguillera-Guillen said. “There’s another guy who wants to take your place, especially in these small teams.”
Looking ahead, the priority should be protecting players’ health and well-being, but ignoring this reality can bring serious consequences beyond the individual level. Leagues risk losing appeal if stars cannot play or if games become less intense because of widespread injuries.
Teams can also become less competitive or even irrelevant for months if half of their roster is out with accumulated injuries. When star players are absent, the quality of the spectacle drops, viewership decreases and the sport loses sporting and economic value. Contracts should prioritize athletes’ health.
Beyond injuries, Aguillera-Guillen said players also have little control over when they actually get to play.
“Most of the time, even though you feel good, you don’t get to choose when you play,” he said. “That’s completely up to the manager, and there’s nothing you can do.”
Across major sports, athletes often find themselves with little say over where they play, how their injuries are handled or when they can join their national teams. These situations have become more noticeable as players openly question how much control teams and leagues should have over their careers.
A famous case came during the 2014 World Cup, when Ángel Di María revealed that Real Madrid sent a formal letter to the Argentine Football Association urging them not to use him in the final because of a thigh injury.
Argentina’s doctors had not fully ruled him out, but Real Madrid said they would not take responsibility if he made the injury worse, especially with his transfer expected that summer. Di María later said he wanted to play but ultimately remained on the bench, raising questions about how much influence clubs can exert during national team tournaments.
Signing a professional contract also comes with lots of mental stress and can affect players psychologically. Being paid millions of dollars to perform at your best and have millions of people expect high levels of performance can be stressful for athletes.
For example, the №1 pick in the 2017 NBA draft, Markelle Fultz, is one example of how these professional contracts can affect an athlete’s mental health. Through his first season in the NBA, he played only 14 games after being sidelined due to a shoulder injury, facing significant backlash as the first overall pick.
This caused Fultz lots of mental stress. In an article by The Ringer, Fultz said, “That was the time where it was really dark as far as I lost an outlet for myself.” Having fans hold big expectations from a player can be very stressful and cause lots of mental stress, as it did for Fultz.
Additionally, the concern that one day the team may decide to part ways with you and trade you without the athlete’s knowledge is another significant source of mental stress for athletes. Athletes are grown adults who have families; being traded from one team to another can result in having to relocate the whole family across the country.
A well-known example occurred in 2018 when DeMar DeRozan was traded from the Toronto Raptors to the San Antonio Spurs. He was moved despite previously being told he was part of the team’s long-term plans. DeRozan later said he felt surprised, showing how quickly teams can make major decisions without involving the player.
Running back Le’Veon Bell publicly criticized the Pittsburgh Steelers’ handling of his contract situation in 2018, saying he felt pressured to play through heavy workloads without long-term security. Bell eventually sat out the entire season, arguing that players have little protection against being overused before contracts expire.
Professional contracts may look like guaranteed success from the outside, but the reality is far more complex. Athletes gain financial security, but they also enter agreements that limit their freedom, from media obligations to clauses that restrict where they can play. Even small details in a contract can shape a player’s daily life, and most of these rules benefit teams far more than the athletes themselves.
The physical demands are another major concern. Modern schedules push players beyond what their bodies can realistically handle, increasing injuries and shortening careers. Interviews with athletes like Eduardo Aguillera-Guillen show that this problem isn’t limited to top leagues, even smaller professional players deal with tight turnarounds, limited recovery and constant pressure to perform. This universal strain reveals a sports system designed for profit first, performance second and health last.
The psychological toll is equally heavy. Athletes are expected to perform at elite levels while managing fan expectations, media scrutiny and the fear of losing their place on a team. Cases like Fultz and DeRozan show how big contracts don’t protect players from mental stress or sudden career changes, especially when teams make decisions without their input.
In the end, contracts should serve as protection for athletes, not as tools that control them. As leagues continue to grow and generate billions, there must be a stronger balance between business and player well-being. Prioritizing recovery, mental health and player autonomy isn’t just fair, it’s necessary if sports are going to remain competitive, safe and sustainable for the people who make them possible.