Barca best paying team in the world
LONDON: Barcelona are the bestpaid team in global sport and the first to have average basic annual pay of more than £10 million according to a global survey published on Monday.
The Spanish giants return to the top of the pay rankings in the ninth edition of Sporting Intelligence’s Global Sports Salaries Survey (GSSS) for the first time since 2012. The average annual basic first-team salary at the Camp Nou was more than £10.45 million in late November of the 2018-19 season.
Real Madrid have climbed to second place with average basic pay at the Bernabeu is just over £8 million per year. In third place are last year’s number one team, basketball’s Oklahoma City Thunder (£7.85million).
The metric used by the GSSS is average first-team pay. It looks solely at earnings for playing sport, not for endorsements or other extra-curricular activities.
“Foremost among those contracts was the biggest pay deal in Barcelona’s history awarded to (Lionel) Messi, widely regarded now as the best footballer of all time. His gross basic (pre-tax) annual Barca pay tops £50m per year, including guaranteed image rights fees,” the report said. As recently as the 2015 GSSS, there were eight football teams in the top 10 but there are just four this year.
The NBA has extended its lead as the best-paying league by average salary (£5.9 million), ahead of the Indian Premier League (£3.8 million when weekly pay is annualised) and MLB (baseball).
NORTHEAST BEAT PUNE CITY 2-0, GO SECOND
PUNE: Northeast United FC beat FC Pune City 2-0 in an Indian Super League clash at the Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex on Tuesday. Bartholomew Ogbeche and Juan Mascia scored a goal each to seal three points for the visitors, who have continued their unbeaten run away from home and climbed to the second spot on the league table with 17 points from eight matches.
COPA FINAL MOVED OUTSIDE ARGENTINA
ASUNCION: The Copa Libertadores football final between River Plate and Boca Juniors will take place in early December and will be played outside Argentina after crowd trouble forced the game to be postponed last week.
“It will be played outside Argentina because the conditions do not exist for the game to be played in Argentina,” CONMEBOL President Alejandro Dominguez told a news conference after meeting with the heads of both clubs at the confederation’s headquarters in Paraguay.
DORTMUND BUS BOMBER GETS 14-YEAR SENTENCE
DORTMUND:A German court sentenced a German-russian man to 14 years behind bars on Tuesday for a bomb attack on the Borussia Dortmund (BVB) soccer team bus in 2017 as part of a money-making scheme. The defendant, 29, identified by authorities only as Sergei W., had admitted to setting off the roadside bomb in April 2017, which injured one of the club’s players, but said he wanted to make money rather than harm or kill anyone.