Highest paid sports have been always an interesting topic that people love to take about.
The sports industry is one of the wealthiest industries in the world. In addition to its role as a means of entertainment, it has also become a lucrative profession for many sports athletes.
The sports industry pays hundreds of billions to athletes every year. This gives those athletes a life of abundance and luxury.
Let’s explore what these sports are with Top News in this article!
Contents
1. Baseball is among the highest paid sport
It is the richest sport in the world with a market value of 40 billion USD. Baseball ranked first using the average salary paid to athletes as the benchmark.
One of the outstanding players, Clayton Kershaw earns 33.8 million USD a year on salary from the baseball league. Besides, he made 750,000 USD through collaboration contracts with many brands.
Professional athletes participating in the MLB baseball league can earn an average annual salary of $8.5 million per year. Some of the world’s top athletes can make more than that.
2. Basketball is in the top highest paid sportsman
Basketball is one of the richest sports in the world with a market value of $90 billion. The US is the country that holds the majority of that market share.
On average, athletes who play this sport earn $3.8 million per year. Basketball star Stephen Curry is currently the highest-paid basketball player. According to ESPN, his salary is more than 45.78 million USD.
However, the legendary Michael Jordan is the richest basketball player in the world, owning a fortune of 1.7 billion USD. Most of Michael Jordan’s fortune comes from collaborations with the largest sponsor – Nike.
3. American football is one of the highest paying sport in the world
Also known as Gridiron, American football is the 3rd richest sport in the world. It has a market value of 200 billion USD.
The average income of players participating in the NFL (American professional rugby league) is about 2.4 million USD per year. American football has two players Matt Ryan and Matthew Stafford are two of the richest sports athletes in the world.
Matt Ryan’s estimated fortune is 70 million USD. Matthew Stafford has a net worth of 80 million USD.
4. Ice Hockey
The world’s richest sports take place mainly in the US and Canada. Most of its shares are also owned by these two countries. Ice hockey has a market value of $60 billion by 2020.
The NHL, one of the biggest leagues in the sport, pays professional players an average of $2.2 million per year.
Ice hockey star Connor McDavid earned about $19 million from the tournament and $15 million in salary. Besides, he also earned 4 million USD from cooperation contracts with brands such as Adidas, and BioSteel.
5. Football
It is the most popular sport with huge viewership from many parts of the world, having the highest industry share of all sports. It has a total industry value of nearly $600 billion, accounting for 43% of the global sports finance market.
On average, professional football players can earn 1.5 million USD per year. Two of the greatest players, Cristiano Ronaldo (CR7) and Lionel Messi, hold the top spot of highest-paid strikers, according to Statista’s 2021 survey.
CR7 is paid 70 million USD and 55 million USD from the collaboration contract. Messi is in second place with $75 million in salary and $35 million from a collaboration contract.
6. Golf
Golf, which is labeled a “rich sport”, is worth 7 billion USD. On average, professional golfers are paid about $80,000 per year. Meanwhile, the first golfer earns about 1.8 million USD per tournament.
Tiger Woods, the greatest golfer earns 43.3 million USD in 2021 in salary with 29.9 million USD in tournament prize money. This does not include collaboration contracts worth about 13 million USD from different brands.
7. Tennis
This aristocratic sport attracts a huge audience around the world, and the average income of professional athletes is also very large, in the range of 50,000 USD per year.
If they are famous athletes, in addition to salary, their income also comes from bonuses and advertising contracts, depending on the attractiveness of each athlete. Currently, Roger Federer (Switzerland) is the highest-earning tennis player in the world with an amount of 64 million USD.
8. Boxing
For this dangerous sport, the prize money received by the boxers is calculated by each round. As for the average salary, they can receive about $ 75,000 per year. Canelo Alvarez (Mexico) is currently the world’s highest-earning boxer with $28.5 million.
9. Motorcycle racing
This speed sport never ceases to bring extreme excitement to viewers, so racing athletes also receive a decent salary, an average of 1 million dollars per year.
10. Road Bike racing
This is one of the most arduous sports in the world as cyclists compete under extremely harsh conditions. On average, a professional cyclist receives about 33,000 per year.
Final thought
The highest paid sports in the world always keep people fascinated, every athlete tries their best to get further in life, and they motivate themselves by going the extra mile to make it work.