Professional sports are a big business. Big with a capital B. The NBA has total revenue of almost $20 billion, which if it were a stand-alone economy, that would place it at #113 in the world, just behind Afghanistan and ahead of Jamaica, Bosnia, and Laos. The NFL and MLB both report annual revenue of about $10 billion, which would place those two entities at #135 and #136 respectively on the world scale out of 190 countries.
People in the United States, and the world, spend a lot of money on American sports.
This article isn’t about how much money the big three make, it’s about what they do with a small piece of it, specifically for their former players.