Barcelona stars earn £25m over five years...

Barcelona are out of the Champions League and far from a shoo-in for the La Liga title but at least even the average players in the Nou Camp squad are unlikely to worry about money ever again.
A new report on global pay in sport has found an average first-team Barca player has earned £24,995,540 over the past five years, which is more than the average five-year pay at any team in world sport.
The eye-watering sums on offer in elite European football and in the major sports leagues of America effectively mean that a single five-year deal should provide enough money to set up a player for life.

Big money: The average Barcelona player earns £25million over five years, which is more than the average five-year pay at any team in world sport

No worries: Signing a five-year deal with a major sports team should set up a player for life

Payday: Gareth Bale and his Real Madrid team-mates earn just over half a million less than rivals Barcelona over 5 years

 

Barcelona’s La Liga rivals have paid the next most on average in the past five years: £24.4m per player on average, followed by the New York Yankees of Major League baseball (£23.6m) and then Manchester City (£20.8m) and Chelsea (£20.4m) of the Premier League.
Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool all make it into the top 20 alongside globally famous teams such as the LA Lakers of the NBA and the Boston Red Sox baseball team - who are owned, like Liverpool, by John W Henry’s Fenway Sports Group.
The numbers are published today as part of the Global Sports Salaries Survey (GSSS) produced for ESPN The Magazine in the USA. The report looks solely at earnings for playing sport, not for endorsements or other extra-curricular activities.
The five-year earnings list highlights some counter-intuitive findings, including how relatively poorly the average player in the NFL in America is paid. There is a general perception that NFL stars, in an industry awash with cash, all earn bumper pay packets. The reality is a few players on each team earn huge money but many earn ‘only’ hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
As a result, the best paid NFL team over five years, the Dallas Cowboys, appear only at No93 in the five-year list, with an average player earning ‘only’ £7.8m over five years. 
The Cowboys are one place below Everton (£7.87m over five years per average player) and 20 places lower than the best paying NHL ice-hockey team, the Chicago Blackhawks (£9.1m per average player over five years).

Owner: The LA Lakers, Boston Red Sox and Liverpool - owned by John W Henry's Fenay Sports Group - all made it into the top 20

High five: The average player playing for the New York Yankees earns £23.5m over 5 years

 

Fall: The LA lakers have seen a decrease in the difference between earnings in 2010 and 2014

Best paying sports teams in the world based on average players’ total salary over five years