Professional baseball players should control their image rights for photographs or videos where they are not in uniform, the Chinese Professional Baseball League players’ union said yesterday, as it called for more sharing of profits after the league’s income increased by more than 50 percent last year.
“We congratulate the league on finally turning a profit, but it is important to realize that players’ salary guarantees have not changed in years,” union spokesman Chao Tzu-wei (趙子維) said, adding that minimum salaries for regular players have not been raised in seven years, while more than half of the players earn less than NT$100,000 (US$3,065) per month.
An annual financial report published by the league earlier this week showed that the league’s and its four affiliated teams’ incomes rose by 52 percent last year, yielding a net profit of NT$20 million.
Taiwanese players make an average of NT$152,000 per month, compared with about NT$318,000 per month for players in the South Korean league and NT$923,000 per month for players in Japan, according to union figures.
“Given the short, four-to-five-year-long career of an average player, the salary structure is insufficient to attract talent,” Chao said, calling for minimum salaries for regular players to be increased from NT$70,000 to NT$100,000.
He said that the inability of most players to profit from their image rights created a “double loss” situation for the league.
“Only about 30 percent of players have supplemental contracts granting them shares on the profits from image rights so they and their agents have no incentive to cultivate the business value,” he said.
The union said that the majority of the league’s income, including product sales, baseball cards, video game rights and broadcasting rights were tied closely to player image rights.
Players’ contracts require that they unconditionally allow the league to use their images in return for an “appropriate” share of profits, while forbidding them from giving public performances or appearing in advertisements or other media without the league’s approval, the union said.
Additional reporting by Hsu Cheng-yang
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