Many fans these days, have become angry with the high priced contracts given to professional athletes and who can blame them with many athletes making more money in one year than the average fan will in their lifetime. Many fans blame the athlete for this but in my opinion the fan should not blame the athlete, they are just getting their piece of the pie. What the athlete makes is just a small portion of what the industry itself makes. Professional teams routinely pull in billions of dollars per year and the athlete receives only a small portion of this. The industry also makes a ton of money off of other things such as merchandise.
Sports franchises make millions of dollars yearly off of the sale of their merchandise.
In fact the Dallas Cowboys set a precedent in 1996 by signing their own merchandise deal with Nike, thus becoming the first National Football League team to have such a deal. Dallas Cowboy merchandise became a immediate hit because of the teams success on the field and because of the Nike logo itself. Nike at the time was head and shoulders above the rest in terms of popularity. This popularity led to massive amounts of sales of Cowboy merchandise. These high priced contracts also drive up the ticket prices and concession prices which further outrages the fan.