Which club pays the most among Real Madrid, Barcelona and Manchester City?
Barcelona splashed cash at the start of the season, signing Brazilian sensation Neymar for a reported sum of £48.6million
Football clubs take the lion’s share of the possession when it comes to being the best paid teams in the world. A survey conducted by Sportingintelligence’s Global Sports Salaries Survey (GSSS) in association with ESPN The Magazine hit the stands this week in The Magazine’s ‘Money Issue‘ (available for only people with ESPN insider subscription). The survey, which was the fifth edition of Sportingintelligence‘s review of global pay in team sport was done solely based upon earnings for playing sport, not for any promotions or other activities.
Sheikh Mansour’s Manchester City takes pole position, handing out a whopping average first-team pay of £5.3m per year, or £102,653 per week. Three football clubs viz. Manchester City, Real Madrid and Barcelona appear in the top 5 with baseball clubs, and the New York Yankees and LA Dodgers of Major League Baseball (MLB) filling in the other two spots.
Stats courtesy sportingintelligence.com
Extend the list a bit further and five Premier League sides make it into the top 20. Manchester United, with Rooney’s new deal make an appearance as the second highest paying EPL side No8. with their net expenditure of £4.3m per man per year.
Roman Abramovich’s Chelsea and Arsenal follow the two Manchester clubs at No10. (nearly £4m) and No11 (£3.9m) respectively.
The fifth club to make an appearance in the list is league-leader Liverpool, who round off the list at No. 20. The highest scoring and arguably the most entertaining side in the league certainly are no misers when it comes to splashing the cash. The Merseysiders, having signed Luis Suarez to a mega deal this December splash out £3.4m per person per year.
The only team football team to appear outside of the Premier League and the La Liga is Bayern Munich, who shell out £4.4m.
Football clubs reign supreme when it comes to long term deals (click to enlarge)
Stats courtesy: sportingintelligence.com
In terms of five year deals however; there are no better paymasters than the elite clubs of European football. The report also suggests that a five-year deal for any player in one on the top European leagues would be enough to set you up for life.
Barcelona tops the chart when it comes to average pay to a first team player over five-years. A ‘typical’ player at the Nou Camp earns £24,995,540 over the five seasons of the survey. Real Madrid are the next best when it comes to five-year total: £24.4m per player on average, with City (£20.8m) and Chelsea (£20.4m) propping up at 4th and 5th places respectively.
The English Premier League came out on top in terms of being the best paying football league, with an average annual pay of £2.27m per player. The report considers 294 teams from 15 leagues in 12 countries from seven sports (football, baseball, basketball, gridiron, cricket, ice hockey and Aussie Rules football), ranked by average first-team pay.