Five Premier League sides make the top 20 on the list, with Liverpool - City’s title showdown opponents from Sunday - in 20th place, earning an average of £3.4m per man per year.
Manchester United are at No 8 on £4.3m per man per year, Champions League semi-finalists Chelsea are at No 10 (nearly £4m) and Arsenal are at No 11 (£3.9m).
High earners: Manchester City have topped a global sports salary list, with their squad paid £5.3m a year
Big spender: City owner Sheik Mansour has invested hundreds of millions into making them title challengers
Blank cheque: Manuel Pellegrini could sign pretty much any player in the world for City
The top 10 also includes the Brooklyn Nets of the NBA (at No 6), Bayern Munich (No 7), and the Chicago Bulls of the NBA (No 9).
The Global Sports Salaries Survey (GSSS), produced for ESPN The Magazine in the USA, has been tracking comparative pay at major sports teams for five years.
City players were earning an average of just under £1.5m a year each when Sheik Mansour arrived in 2008 but their pay has more than trebled in the six years of his ownership.
Chelsea have also seen their wages and fortunes soar since Roman Abramovich arrived at Stamford Bridge in 2003 but foreign sugar-daddy ownership is not restricted to elite European football.
Big hitters: The New York Yankees baseball team ranked second on the earners' list
Coining it in: The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball
team are third on the salary list with an average annual pay of £5.1m
but they moved down from second place last year
The Brooklyn Nets were bought in 2010 by one of Abramovich’s fellow Russian billionaires, Mikhail Prokhorov.
Not only is Prokhorov footing the Nets’ $102m (around £61m) total payroll in 2013-14, or £4.5m per player this year, but he will need to pay an additional $70m (around £42m) or thereabouts in luxury tax for exceeding the NBA’s wage cap.
On the list: Chelsea were 10th in the rankings
with a £3.9m wage bill and still have a chance of winning the Premier
League title this season
Wealth: Roman Abramovich has poured millions into Chelsea since he became owner in 2003
Close call: Arsenal are just behind Chelsea in
the survey. They advanced to the final of the FA Cup at the weekend,
beating Wigan on penalties at Wembley
Sneaking in: Liverpool came in 20th in the
salary list with an annual spend of £3.4m on wages each year. That could
increase if they win their first league title in 24 years next month
Overpaid? Manchester United came in eighth in
the list but have fallen short in the Premier League and Champions
League this season
The GSSS looks solely at earnings for playing sport, not for endorsements or other extra-curricular activities. The 2014 report considers 294 teams in 15 leagues in 12 countries across seven different sports: football, baseball, basketball, gridiron, cricket, ice hockey and Aussie Rules football.
The report looks at numbers from either current or most recently completed seasons, depending on availability of accounts and other information.
The NBA is the highest-paying league as a whole, with 441 players at 30 teams in the 2013-14 season earning an average of £2.98m per year each.
The Premier League is the best paying football league in the world, with the average annual pay at £2.27m per player.
THE WORLD'S BEST PAID SPORTS TEAM BY AVERAGE FIRST-TEAM SALARY
| RANK (LAST YEAR) | TEAM | LEAGUE | AV. ANNUAL PAY (WEEKLY) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 (1) | Manchester City | Premier League | £5,337,944 (£102,653) |
| 2 (5) | New York Yankees | MLB | £5,286,628 (£101,666) |
| 3 (2) | Los Angeles Dodgers | MLB | £5,119,701 (£98,456) |
| 4 (3) | Real Madrid | La Liga | £4,993,393 (£96,027) |
| 5 (4) | Barcelona | La Liga | £4,901,327 (£94,256) |
| 6 (16) | Brooklyn Nets | NBA | £4,485,019 (£86,250) |
| 7 (9) | Bayern Munich | Bundesliga | £4,402,905 (£84,671) |
| 8 (12) | Manchester United | Premier League | £4,322,251 (£83,120) |
| 9 (19) | Chicago Bulls | NBA | £3,985,706 (£76,648) |
| 10 (8) | Chelsea | Premier League | £3,984,536 (£76,626) |
| 11 (15) | Arsenal | Premier League | £3,901,923 (£75,037) |
| 12 (20) | New York Knicks | NBA | £3,862,191 (£74,273) |
| 13 (14) | Detroit Tigers | MLB | £3,833,510 (£73,721) |
| 14 (11) | Philadelphia Phillies | MLB | £3,811,638 (£73,301) |
| 15 (22) | Boston Red Sox | MLB | £3,763,451 (£72,374) |
| 16 (17) | Miami Heat | NBA | £3,665,215 (£70,485) |
| 17 (23) | San Francisco Giants | MLB | £3,613,741 (£69,495) |
| 18 (35) | Juventus | Serie A | £3,512,696 (£67,552) |
| 19 (7) | LA Lakers | NBA | £3,411,402 (£65,604) |
| 20 (21) | Liverpool | Premier League | £3,403,783 (£65,457) |
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