Own a Piece Of Your Favorite Athlete

Plans are in motion for a stock market in professional athletes
By Jesse Andrews,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 23, 2007 10:55 PM CDT
Own a Piece Of Your Favorite Athlete
Tiger Woods watches his shot on the ninth tee during the third round of the 2007 Masters golf tournament at the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., Saturday, April 7, 2007. (AP Photo/Rob Carr)    (Associated Press)

The good news: fantasy sports will soon be obsolete.  The bad news: the replacement is far more insidious.  Companies are currently designing stock markets in athletes that would allow fans (not to mention dispassionate investors) to buy and sell shares in individual stars and up-and-comers in the sporting world.  It's like gambling, but somehow more respectable.

One specific proposal, by A.S.A. Sports Exchange, would allow athletes to sell 20% of their future earnings to a trust, in which one can buy securities. This is intuitive stuff, as Moneyball co-writer Michael Lewis notes:  "Professional athletes have all the traits of successful publicly traded stocks, beginning with enormous speculative interest in them." (More Tiger Woods stories.)

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