£50 , 000 A WEEK!
That’s now the AVERAGE salary in the Premier League, highest in world football
THE average Premier League wage has risen above £50,000 per week for the first time — a global first for any football league.
But while average yearly pay in the 2017-18 season in England’s top division is now £2,642,508 (or £50,817 per week), the world’s three best-paid clubs come from Spain and France.
Barcelona of La Liga top football’s list according to the 2017 global sports salaries survey (GSSS), published today, with average firstteam pay of almost £6.6m a year.
The Barca numbers include Lionel Messi’s £500,000-per-week contract extension to 2021, agreed in July but only signed yesterday.
Paris Saint-Germain, who sensationally signed Neymar from Barca last summer, are breathing down their necks on almost £6.5m a year, and rising fast. If PSG have a successful campaign on the field and splash big bonuses, they would likely overtake the Catalan club. Real Madrid are third on £6.2m.
Best paying English clubs are Manchester United and Manchester City, in that order, but only just. They are both on around £5.2m per player per year, or £100,000 per week basic average, across their squads. As with Barca and PSG, the on-field fortunes of the Manchester pair will likely dictate which has the biggest total wage bill for 201718. Success and trophies for one club while the other won nothing, for example, would result in a higher bill through performancerelated payments and bonuses.
United were the best-paid team in the world in last season’s GSSS but some big contracts since then have either been downsized (Zlatan Ibrahimovic) or cut (Wayne Rooney, Bastian Schweinsteiger) without big replacements.
Currency fluctuations also mean Spanish and French club contracts in euros are worth more in pounds than 12 months ago. The 2017 GSSS considers the pay of more than 12,000 sportsmen and women at 465 teams in nine sports across 29 of the richest and most popular leagues.
Basketball players in the NBA have the highest average wages at £5.5m each this season. Baseball’s MLB players are next as a group on £3.4m, followed by Indian Premier League cricketers when weekly pay is pro-rated, at £3m a year.
The Premier League’s £2.64m annual pay is still well ahead of levels in Spain’s La Liga (£1.68m), Italy’s Serie A (£1.33m) Germany’s Bundesliga (£1.26m, up due to a new TV deal), and France’s Ligue 1 (£944,405, only so high because of PSG’s huge outlay).
The Premier League has four of the best paid 10 clubs in the world and nine of the top 20. Germany’s Bayern Munich and Italy’s Juventus are just behind the Manchester duo and ahead of Chelsea and Arsenal, in turn ahead of Atletico Madrid at No 10. Liverpool, Tottenham, West Ham, Everton and Leicester all make the top 20. Milan, Inter and Roma from Italy as well as Dortmund from Germany and Valencia from Spain have all been boosted by the exchange rate.
The Premier League’s £50,000 per week landmark is put in context by the weekly average in La Liga (£32,309), Serie A (£25,492), Bundesliga (£24,142) and Ligue 1 (£18,162).