This week: There’s very few things sports fans value more in a player than loyalty. However, there are still many famous athletes who famously prioritized personal success over franchise loyalty. In the NBA, Lebron famously left his hometown of Cleveland to join the Miami Heat. In soccer, Luis Figo became one of the most controversial players after switching from Barcelona to arch rivals Real Madrid. 

But is loyalty from a professional athlete even a fair expectation?

There’s no denying that professional sport is a business. Professional teams are businesses that make money through ticket sales, sponsorships, merchandise, and more. Professional leagues sell TV and media rights for billions while players can get paid millions throughout their contract. 

Some teams, like NBA champions New York Knicks, are even publicly traded companies that you can buy on the New York Stock Exchange.

So if professional sport is a business and athletes are employees, is it fair to expect them to sacrifice personal career success for loyalty?

 After all, no one expects loyalty from an accountant…

Another reason against athlete loyalty is that it's one-sided. Teams get to trade and sell players as they wish, even if the player himself doesn’t want to leave. Fans are also quick to abandon players. If a player suffers from injuries or doesn’t perform, fans sometimes publicly demand that the player gets replaced. 

So if the teams themselves and the fans don’t have to be loyal to the players, should the players really be loyal to their teams?

Even though athletes are generally becoming more driven by personal success, there are still stories of athletes who stayed loyal to their teams for their entire careers. However, for many of them, this loyalty came at the cost of a much larger personal career. 

Marco Reus, one of the best German soccer players of his generation, stayed loyal to his hometown team(Dortmund), even after getting offers from the biggest clubs in the world such as Barcelona or Real Madrid. And even though he became a club legend, he never won the biggest trophies. 

Compare this to Robert Lewandowski, one of Reus best friends and teammates at Dortmund. While Reus stayed at Dortmund, Lewandowski left for arch rivals Bayern Munich and later joined Barcelona as well. The result?

While Reus is praised for his loyalty to Dortmund, unlike Lewandowski, he never achieved the success he could have had. Lewandowski on the other hand, won every major club trophy available.

This can be the cost of excessive loyalty. So if that’s the case, should athletes be loyal to their teams? And if so, for how long?

Grow Beyond Sport.

This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute to personalized career, legal, or financial advice.