Global Sports Salaries Survey 2015
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GLOBAL SPORTS SALARIES SURVEY 2015 AVERAGE FIRST-TEAM PAY, TEAM-BY-TEAM, IN THE WORLD’S MOST POPULAR SPORTS LEAGUES 333 TEAMS 17 LEAGUES 13 COUNTRIES 7 sports 9,731 sportsmen $17.94 BILLION IN wages 1 AIM sportingintelligence sportingintelligence sportingintelligence PSG’s first-team squad has cost around £300m in transfer fees... Introduction Paris Saint-Germain is a young than £55m was spent on Barcelona’s Spanish rivals Real football club in several respects, Uruguayan forward Edinson Madrid have climbed to second formed in 1970 and still to come Cavani alone. Before the 2014-15 place this year, from fourth last of age. Based at the Parc des season, Brazil’s David Luiz was year, with their players earning an Princes stadium, perched on the bought for not much less than average £5.04m a year in the period Boulevard Périphérique in the 16th that, making him the most under review. That puts them just arrondisement in the south-west of expensive defender of all time. ahead of Manchester City in third France’s capital city, PSG had won place (on £5.01m), Barcelona in only two league titles before 2013. At the time of writing, PSG’s fourth (£4.7m) and baseball’s Los This compared to 10 each won first-team squad has cost around Angeles Dodgers in fifth, a tiny by Marseille and Saint-Étienne, £300m in transfer fees to assemble margin ahead of Manchester eight by Nantes and seven apiece (or €420m, or $450m at today’s United in sixth. by Monaco and Lyon, to name rates), or an average of £20m just five of the clubs with superior (€28m / $30m) for each of the 15 The top dozen payers are records. Nor had PSG ever made players for whom a fee was paid. completed by Bayern Munich of a sustained impact at the highest the German Bundesliga, Chelsea level of European club football. Now, thanks to the largesse of the of the English Premier League, the club’s owners, PSG’s players are Yankees, Arsenal of the EPL, the The petrodollars of oil-rich Middle the best paid team of professional Brooklyn Nets of the NBA and the East nation Qatar have trans- sportsmen in the world, in any Detroit Tigers of Major League formed PSG since 2011. That was sport, bar none. This sixth edition of Baseball. All of these teams, plus the year Qatar Sports Investments Sporting Intelligence’s global sports another six, are paying salaries high (QSI) took a 70 per cent stake, salaries survey (GSSS) has calculated enough that the average first-team completing a full takeover in 2012 average first-team pay at PSG at player earns more than $100,000 and pouring hundreds of millions of $9,083,993 a year, or £5.3m at the each week. The full list of teams euros into the team. exchange rates at the start of the and average first-team earnings season, which equates to $174,692 are detailed later in this report. QSI, an arm of Qatar’s sovereign per week (£101,898). wealth fund, spent a French record Eight of the top 12 payers are of around £90m, net, in their first The unique metric in our survey football teams, including the top season on transfer fees for new is ‘average first-team pay’ and four, while three come from players including the Argentine the reason we use it plus an baseball and one from basketball. midfielder Javier Pastore, for a fee explanation of how the sums are Four of the 12 top payers are of around €40m, then a record calculated are detailed below. based in the USA, and four in for Ligue 1. They splashed a similar England, with two in Spain and amount for Brazilian defender PSG are the fourth different sports one each in France and Germany. Thiago Silva before the 2012-13 team to have held the No1 best- The best paying sports teams in the season when net transfer spending paid slot, and aside from baseball’s world, in other words, come from exceeded £125m on stars also New York Yankees in the first survey elite European football and major including Zlatan Ibrahimovic in 2010, the others have all been league US sport. And increasingly from Milan. football (soccer) clubs, PSG they are funded by oil. following in the wake of Barcelona In 2013-14 the net spending was (top in 2011 and 2012) and PSG’s owners derive their wealth around £100m, of which more Manchester City (2013 and 2014). from oil, while the club’s shirt 2 3 sportingintelligence sportingintelligence sponsor is an airline, Emirates, produce a substantial piece Typically a first-team squad in Manchester City have topped the based in the oil-rich U.A.E and of original research to help football will be 25 players although founded with oil money. The same promote the full launch of it may be as few as 20 and it may pay list in the past two surveys but airline also sponsors Real Madrid www.sportingintelligence.com be more than 30. It depends on the are at No3 this time. and Arsenal within the top dozen in early 2010. team. Similar numbers of players payers. Another of Real Madrid’s per ‘first-team squad’ are used for major sponsors is Abu Dhabi’s The idea was to compare, on the two baseball leagues included International Petroleum Investment a like-for-like basis as closely as - MLB and NPB - and for the ice Company (IPIC). possible, how much ‘average’ hockey league, the NHL. sportsmen earned at hundreds of In NBA basketball, the salaries of Manchester City have topped the different clubs and teams around between 13 and 15 players on each payers list in the past two surveys the world in hugely contrasting roster are considered. In and are at No3 this time. They professional sports. This would Canadian and Australian football are owned by billionaire Sheikh also allow us to examine the the wages of some 40-plus players Mansour of Abu Dhabi’s royal relationship between money are counted per team and in the family, whose wealth derives from and success in each sport, as in NFL it is more than 50 per team. oil. Mansour is also deputy Prime the article linked here. Minister of the U.A.E and the By ‘average’, we mean ‘arithmetic chairman of the board of IPIC’s mean’. All the salaries are added up In order to reflect global and not governors. Among Manchester (and by salaries, we include money just western patterns, it was City’s other sponsors are Etihad for playing sport for that team, not necessary to look beyond one or Airways, telecoms company for endorsements or sponsorship or two ‘hotspots’ in European football Etisalat and investment firm Aabar, anything else extra-curricular) and and major North American sport. all based in the U.A.E. Etisalat are divided by the number of players. So the starting point for the first also a sponsor of Barcelona, the That’s it. A simple list that provokes survey was considering the most No4 payers, whose lucrative shirt complicated arguments but does, popular domestic professional deal with Qatar Airways is worth at the very least, provide a ‘ball sports leagues - measured by more than €30m a year. park’ reckoner of what different average ticket-buying attendance sports teams pay. per game - and included not only Also inside the top dozen payers, the NFL, the Premier League and Chelsea (No8) are owned by Salaries in all the 17 leagues except other ‘major’ leagues but also Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, cricket’s Indian Premier League are Indian Premier League cricket and who became a billionaire on the calculated on the basis of annual Japanese baseball. Subsequent back of oil while the Yankees (No9) pay deriving from annual contracts reports have expanded to add are now part of a commercial handed to players. As a rule, the vast Australian Rules football and partnership with Mansour through majority of players in all the other Canadian gridiron (CFL), then their joint ownership of an MLS 16 leagues are contracted by the Chinese Super League football, team, New York City FC. sporting year (or years), which takes Japanese J-League football and in a season. In the IPL, the players Ligue 1 from France. Arsenal (No10) also have a are contracted for the period of the Russian oligarch co-owner in event, seven weeks in the case of Alisher Usmanov while the Brooklyn The key metric is ‘average first- 2014, and spend much of the rest Nets (No11) are owned by another team pay’. It sounds simple but to of the time as ‘guns for hire’ with Russian billionaire, Mikhail stay true to our like-for-like target different teams in different leagues. Prokhorov, although both those requires a range of decisions The starting point for IPL salaries men built their fortunes on metals about what to include. What does therefore is average weekly pay, and mining rather than black gold. ‘first team’ constitute at a football extrapolated pro rata to get an club? In the NBA? In Japanese annual average sum. IPL is the only Sporting Intelligence’s global baseball? The answer in all cases is league where we do this, because sports salaries survey was the ‘first-team squad’ or the closest the players there, uniquely, routinely conceived in 2009 with several equivalent possible, sometimes but each have multiple employers in aims, one of them being to not always the ‘active roster’. one year. 4 5 sportingintelligence sportingintelligence even when the team with fewer The average earnings, annually variations within the league.