The Highest Paying Sports Teams In The World [Infographic]

Written by imoney Illustration by Michelle Leong

Which team pays its players the most? According to the Global Salaries Survey by Sportingintelligence, the best-paying sport is football. And the best-paying team in the world is Paris Saint-Germain, the Qatari-owned, Paris-based football team featuring stars like Zlatan Ibrahimovic and David Luiz.

How well paid? At PSG, each player earns an average of P364.92 million a year, or P7.02 million a week in the period under review. And it seems like that amount has paid off as PSG won Ligue 1, the top division in France, for the third year in a row in 2015. Topping their payroll is of course the 33-year-old center forward Ibrahimovic, who earns P752.93 million a year.

Football powerhouse Real Madrid rose from fourth position last year to second position this year, with each player earning an average salary of P347.14 million a year, or P6.68 million a week. With superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo (P853.08 million a year) and Gareth Bale (P1.03 billion a year) on their payroll, it’s no surprise their wage bill is so large.

Last year’s highest-paying team, Manchester City, slipped to position this year, with an average annual pay of P345.39 million a year, or P6.64 million a week.

Out of the top 10 highest paying sports teams in the world, only two are not football teams — the Los Angeles Dodgers, with an average annual pay of P322.31 million a year (P6.20 million weekly), and the New York Yankees, at P293.63 million a year (P5.65 million weekly). Both these teams are in Major League Baseball in the US.

Those amounts are staggering in and of themselves, but compare all that to the P420,000 monthly salary cap for the PBA and it becomes even more amazing.

Despite the dominance of football teams in the top 10 chart, surprisingly, the highest-paying league is actually the US-based National Basketball Association, with 448 players in 30 teams earning an average of P183.88 million yearly. The highest-paying football league, the Premier League, “only” pays its players P153.58 million yearly on average.

Overall, 9,731 athletes in 333 teams across 17 major pro leagues made a total of P810.99 billion in the period under review.