ESPN tracked annual salaries–the base pay the players received for their most recent season or calendar year (endorsements and other sources of income were excluded) across 182 nations and 17 sports, from baseball and basketball to badminton and cricket. Salary data was collected from “multiple sources, including leagues, agents, consulates, embassies, sports federations, cultural centers, and the U.N.”
According to the data, it’s not football, baseball, basketball, or even NASCAR that accounts for the lion’s share of sports superstars. Wake up, America: 114 of the 184 best-paid athletes in the world play soccer–almost seven times more than the next runner up (basketball, with 18 uber-rich players). For the rest, there are 12 baseball players, six auto-racers, five golfers, five football players, four cricketeers, three boxers, and three track and field contestants. Rugby and tennis each contribute two competitors, and there is one representative each from badminton, cycling, motorcycle racing, sumo wrestling, and yachting.
The first map, above, by Zara Matheson of the Martin Prosperity Institute shows which countries these athletes live in. The richest two players, Pacman the Destroyer and A-Rod (both earned $32,000,000), live in the Philippines and the U.S. respectively (A-Rod spent much of his childhood in the Dominican Republic, but was born in New York City). Finland’s Kimi Raikonnen ($26.3 million) and Spain’s Fernando Alonso ($22.7 million), both auto racers, are the third and fourth highest paid. Venezuela’s Johan Santana clocks in at $21 million and some change; Italy’s Valentino Rossi, a motorcycle racer, earns $20,800,000.
The second map shows the ratio of the highest paid athletes’ salaries to a proxy measure for average pay–a country’s Gross Domestic Product or GDP per person. A-Rod’s $32 million salary, for example, is about 715 times the size of the per capita U.S. GDP of $44,872 per person. Jason Bay, who hails from Canada, makes $18.1 million playing for the New York Mets–455 times Canada’s per capita GDP. That sounds like–and is–a big difference. But Manny Pacquiao makes 18,000 times the per capita GDP of the Philippines and two other athletes’ salaries are even higher multiples. Samuel Dalembert of the Sacramento Kings hails from Haiti; he makes more than 19,000 times Haiti’s per capita GDP. And the salary of Emmanuel Adebayor, who plays soccer for Real Madrid on loan from Manchester City, is a staggering 24,000-plus times more than the per capita GDP of his homeland of Togo.
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