Is Steph Curry cheap and how random is random?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2017
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are top basketball players underpaid?
The American basketballer Stephen Curry has just signed the biggest contract in NBA history. The new deal will pay him $200 million over 5 years but amazingly, according to fellow superstar player Lebron James, he’s probably being underpaid. It may sound ridiculous but economists agree. How can this be true? We look at the economics of superstar sports salaries.
The mystery of Ryanair’s seat allocation
Ryanair carries more international passengers a year than any other airline. The European budget carrier is renowned for its low cost seats. If you want to guarantee seating next to people you book with, you have to pay extra. Otherwise, Ryanair says it will allocate seats randomly. We speak to statistician Dr Jennifer Rogers from the University of Oxford about her doubts over the ‘random’ nature of the seat allocation.
Presenter: Charlotte McDonald Producer: Charlotte McDonald and Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:40.0 | We don't really cover sport on this program, but we do cover numbers and this week has seen a very big number in American basketball. |
| 0:49.0 | Steph Curry scores richest deal in NBA history with 200 million dollar contract. |
| 0:55.0 | Stephen Curry plays for the Golden State Warriors in the NBA. |
| 0:59.0 | He's short by basketball standards, but what he hasn't got in size he makes up for in skill. |
| 1:04.8 | For the last three years he's been the best player in the team that have dominated the league, |
| 1:09.3 | and this week he signed a new deal that makes him not just the best paid basketball player in the world, |
| 1:15.0 | but breaks the record for any American team sport. |
| 1:19.0 | He's now up there with footballers messy and Ronaldo. |
| 1:22.0 | Sub-month reaction was to be expected. |
| 1:25.2 | Is Steph Curry really worth 201 million dollars? Is anybody? |
| 1:30.5 | But some of the reaction was a bit more surprising. |
| 1:34.0 | Is NBA star Stephen Curry still underpaid at $40 million a year? |
| 1:40.0 | The Braun James says rival Stephen Curry should get more than $201 million. |
| 1:46.6 | Now sport is full of dumb opinions, but the thing about the idea that Steph Curry is underpaid is that economists agree. |
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