5 Highest Paying Sports in the World

5 Highest Paying Sports in the World

We all love to kick back and watch our favorite athletes cream the competition, but how much do those players really make?

Here’s our countdown of today’s highest-paying professional sports leagues according to player salaries.

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PGA Golf

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Golf, you say? It’s true! While the golf pro at your local club might not be raking in high six figures on a regular basis, the financial outlook for those in the big leagues is much brighter.

Players on the 2021 PGA Tour brought home an average of $1,485,055.

Top-earning player: Jon Rahm lead the 2021 PGA with $7,705,933 in prize money

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Hockey

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Thanks to the surprising popularity of teams like the Vegas Golden Knights, the NHL is surging in popularity, with salaries to match. The average salary for NHL players during the 2019-2020 season was $2.69 million.

The Minnesota Wild pay their players the most, with an average salary of $3.32 million. The Toronto Maple Leafs are on the low end with salaries averaging just $1.54 million.

Top-earning player: Connor McDavid of the Edmonton Oilers — $12.5 million

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Football

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The National Football League has incredible visibility, with Monday Night Football on ESPN averaging an incredible 13.5 million viewers throughout the season. That translates into big bucks for team owners and players alike.

The average salary in the NFL in 2017 was about $2.7 million. If that seems low, remember that rookies have a mandated minimum salary of just $480,000.

Top-earning player: Matt Ryan of the Atlanta Falcons — $48.66 million

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Baseball

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The average salary across all MLB players is about $4.36 million per year, but the leagues superstars make nearly eight times that.

While MLB teams reach an average per-franchise value of about $2 billion, the same as teams in the NBA, there are more players per team. That means MLB players’ salaries can be quite a bit lower.

Top-earning player: Trevor Bauer of the Los Angeles Dodgers — $40 million

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Basketball

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There are 30 teams in the NBA, and they all bring in an enormous amount of money thanks to everything from ticket sales to huge sponsorships to all kinds of merchandise.

On average, NBA teams are worth about $2.12 billion each, with individual player salaries averaging out to approximately $8.25 million per person annually.

Top-earning player: Lebron James of the Los Angeles Lakers — $111.2 million

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