Assuming your talking about the top line players making millions, because your median professional athlete is barely covering there costs if you include athletes outside of the big 5 sports in the US and those outside of the top flight leagues. Then like any performer embedded in the monoculture it happened when mass media became a thing.
Once your able to sell discs, tapes, TV ads on a mass scale with extremely low marginal cost anyone with a claim to that media property can make millions off of it.
A doctor can’t treat millions of people at the same time. A teacher can’t effectively teach millions of people a day. Taylor Swift and shohei ohtani can entertain 10s of thousands of people in a stadium at a time and millions at any moment through streaming.
Assuming your talking about the top line players making millions, because your median professional athlete is barely covering there costs if you include athletes outside of the big 5 sports in the US and those outside of the top flight leagues. Then like any performer embedded in the monoculture it happened when mass media became a thing.
Once your able to sell discs, tapes, TV ads on a mass scale with extremely low marginal cost anyone with a claim to that media property can make millions off of it.
A doctor can’t treat millions of people at the same time. A teacher can’t effectively teach millions of people a day. Taylor Swift and shohei ohtani can entertain 10s of thousands of people in a stadium at a time and millions at any moment through streaming.