So John Terry has just signed a new 5 year deal with Chelsea for a reported 150,000 Pounds a week - so multiply that by 52 weeks and by $1.60 and you get $12.5m salary; add some endorsements, sponsorships and it probably comes out to, let's say, $20m a year - considering he earned $18m last year, I think he was due a rise don't you?
So anyway, all this talk of big bucks got me to thinking how that compares to the highest earning sportsmen in the world...So where else do you go but to Forbes for such fascinating information! Take a look there are lots of interesting lists on there... www.forbes.com/business/sportsmoney/
Now while all these numbers are undoubtedly large, let's put it all in perspective shall we? Let's take Tiger Woods for example; Nike alone are responsible for more than $30m of Tiger's $110m income. $110m a year is more than $2.1m a week or $302k a day, or $12,600 an hour. What do you get paid an hour? So Tiger could buy our house after a day's work (if you call Golfing work!)...not bad at all. And that is in a year where a knee injury took his prize money income down from $25m to $5m! Poor thing!
The interesting thing is that there are no representatives from the most valuable sporting league in the world - the National Football League. The NFL is the richest sport in the world. The reason: No other league has so successfully exploited new stadiums as the NFL during the past decade. Each of the top 10 most valuable teams plays in a modern stadium, or will by 2010.
Yes, England's best football team, Manchester United, is still the most valuable team in the world ($1.8 billion), but there are only four soccer teams (Real Madrid, Arsenal and Liverpool are the others) worth over $1 billion. The NFL now has 19 teams worth that much, compared with five last year and none five years ago. But the highest paid NFL player, Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers, earned (just!) $27.7m thanks to a salary cap which only allows teams to spend a set amount of their income on player salaries - an idea being touted for the Premier League in England. Mind you that's about $1.5m a game, so poor Ben is not doing too bad!
The Forbes list of the highest-paid athletes looks at earnings derived from salaries, bonuses, prize money, endorsements and licensing income between June 2008 and June 2009 and does not deduct for taxes or agents' fees. Overall, the top 20 earned $789 million, down 1% from last year. The cutoff to make the list was $30 million.
- Tiger Woods - $110m - Golf
- Kimi Raikonnen - $45m - Formula 1
- Kobi Bryant - $45m - NBA Basketball
- Michael Jordan - $45m - Basketball (Retired!)
- David Beckham - $42m - Soccer
- Lebron James - $40m - NBA Basketball
- Phil Mickelson - $40m - Golf
- Manny Pacquiao - $40m - Boxing
- Valentino Rossi - $40m - Motorcycling
- Dale Earnhardt Jr - $34m - Nascar
- Roger Federer - $33m - Tennis
- Shaquille O'Neal - $33m - NBA Basketball
- Oscar De La Hoya - $32m - Boxing
- Lewis Hamilton - $32m - Formula 1
- Alex Rodriguez - $32 - Baseball
- Vijay Singh - $31m - Golf
- Kevin Garnett - $30m - NBA Basketball
- Jeff Gordon - $30m - Nascar
- Derek Jeter - $30m - Baseball
- Ronaldinho - $30m - Soccer
Here's a thought, while I've been looking into all this for this blog, Tiger's just banked another $20k...Anyway, I'm off to look down the back of the sofa for a few bucks to go shopping, so don't feel too bad for poor John Terry not making the list!
Wish I had paid more attention to sports at school! By the way where are the women on this list :-)
ReplyDeleteFor women, the highest-paid athletes come almost exclusively from tennis and golf, where prize money and endorsement dollars flow overwhelmingly to the brightest stars. Maria Sharapova topped the 2008 list with $26m, followed by the Williams sisters Serena $14m, and Venus $13m.
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