Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Highest-paid Professional Ultimate Player

The mystery of how much Brodie Smith is paid might be solved.

In today's professional sports world, player salaries are public knowledge (e.g., MLS, NBA). While pro Ultimate players can expect these types of benefits and earn weekly bonuses (MLU), there's one name in the ultimate game who's been rumored to get paid to play.

1. In April 2013, Al Reiger's write-up indicates "The Wildfire pay [Brodie Smith] a modest salary plus travel expenses, and a bonus if they win in the playoffs."

2. SBNation.com's July 2013 article referenced Brodie's earnings like this: "His injury has kept him off the Ultimate field, but that hasn’t slowed his income, since he makes a healthy living off advertising from his trick shot videos, personal appearances and clinics, and a line of equipment and apparel. By most accounts, he is the highest paid performer in Frisbee history."

3. Cameron Brock - an Indianapolis AlleyCats teammate of Brodie Smith during the 2012 AUDL season - posted an entry "All-Night Practice: A house full of Cats" on his personal blog in February 2013. Cameron writes at a time when AUDL rosters were being finalized, and he makes a specific mention of Brodie's player salary.
...First thing is first, congrats to everyone that has made the team so far. We have added many players this year that did not play for the Cats last year. I believe more than half of our team will end up being new players, so there is a lot of turnover from last season's roster. This is for a few different reasons. The first reason is the addition of other teams. Chicago now has 3 of our former players (Goose, Brodie, and Rook). Goose is from Chicago, Rook is his best friend and Brodie... well Brodie is getting paid a lot of money to play there. And when I say a lot of money, I mean more than the average person makes in a year. $40,000. Part of me says "that's really dumb." The other part of me says "I hope this is a sign of things to come." 
Anyways I will talk more about Brodie making that absurd amount of money in a later post. This post is dedicated to the Cats! ...

Screengrab of blog post.

UPDATE 12/14/2013: Cameron Brock's post has been removed.

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