The athletes are not overpaid, its simple math considering how much money is flowing into sports and that is mostly due to the players making it attractive to watch, hence the amount of money. The question should be, shouldnt there be done more to keep competitions fair? The biggest clubs have the best players because they borrow money from their governments or have rich arabic or russian owners who inject their own capital into their clubs which creates an inbalance that gets worse and worse every year. Just look at the latest transfer to be, Neymar from barcelona to psg. Costing $250M and him going to earn $70M a year