Barca and Real overtake Yankees in wages
Reuters - Wednesday 20 April 2011, 18:56
LONDON - Spanish football giants Barcelona
and Real Madrid have overtaken baseball's New York Yankees as
the highest paid teams in global sport, according to the Global
Sports Salaries Survey 2011.
The survey, to be published on Friday, said the average
annual first-team wage at Barcelona was 4.94 million pounds, or 95,081 pounds a week.
Real Madrid were second with their players earning an
average 4.6 million pounds a year while the average first-team
salary at the Yankees was 4.2 million. NBA teams the LA Lakers
and Orlando Magic were fourth and fifth respectively followed by
Premier League Chelsea.
The report compares average first-team pay in 14 of the
world's sports leagues, including the NBA, IPL, MLB, Premier
League, NFL, NHL, Bundesliga, Serie A and La Liga.
The Premier League remains the richest football league in the
world with Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United,
Liverpool and Arsenal among the top 30 best paid teams in world
sport.
"We've known for years that the biggest bucks have been in
American basketball and baseball but the rise and rise in wages
among the elite of European football continues, closing that
gap," Nick Harris, the editor of sportingintelligence.com and
author of the report, said in a statement on Wednesday.
"UEFA's Financial Fair Play regulations may act as a brake
on this inflation in football pay in a few years' time but for
now the big guns in Europe are still splashing out."