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According to Sportingintelligence’s Global Sports Salaries Survey (GSSS) for 2015, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) are the best paid team in global sport. The study compiled in association with ESPN The Magazine said average first team pay at PSG is £5.3m per year (£101,8983 per week).
PSG are now French champions for the third consecutive season. Their improvement stemmed from a 2011 takeover by the oil-funded Qatar Sports Investments (QSI).
Real Madrid who were on fourth place last year have risen to second on the list with an average salary per man of £5.04m per year. The next two teams are also football clubs as Manchester City who led the list last year have dropped to third spending just over £5m per man annually and Barcelona rose by one place from last year to sit in fourth.
The top five is rounded off by the American MLB team LA Dodgers.
Among the top 12 best paid sports teams globally, 8 of them are football clubs. Among the rest are three baseball teams and one basketball team.
English and American teams have four representatives each on the list while there are two from Spain and one each from France and Germany.
Among the top 20, five Premier League sides make an appearance – the aforementioned Manchester City (3rd), Manchester United (6th), Chelsea (8th), Arsenal (10th) and Liverpool (14th).
Many of the teams that featured in the top 20 were owned by super-rich people with interests in multiple sports such as Stan Kroenke – Arsenal and Denver Nuggets both of who appear on the list – and John W Henry of the Fenway Sports Group (FSG) that owns Liverpool and the Red Sox.
They are however just small fish compared to the biggest spenders, the owners of PSG and Manchester City. The sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi has assets estimated at $773bn with City’s owner Sheikh Mansour on its board of directors. PSG’s owners draw their resources from Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund that has an estimated $304bn under investment.
The UAE airline company Emirates also sponsors PSG along with Real Madrid and Arsenal. The Galacticos also have among their major sponsors – IPIC – International Petroleum Investment company from Abu Dhabi where Sheikh Mansour sits on the board as chairman. He also has a partnership with the New York Yankees through the joint ownership of the MLS club New York City FC.
Manchester City is also sponsored by other UAE-based companies such as Etihad and Etisalat. Barcelona are also sponsored by Etisalat while their primary shirt deal is with Qatar Airways.
Apart from the LA Dodgers, other MLB teams such as the New York Yankees, Detroit Tigers, San Francisco Giants, Washington Nationals and Boston Red Sox all appear on the list.
Five teams from the NBA that made the top 20 were the Brooklyn Nets, the New York Knicks, the LA Clippers, the Sacramento Kings and the Denver Nuggets. The Nets made it the nighest on the list among basketball teams as they placed 11th.
This is the sixth edition of the Sportingintelligence salaries survey. While the earlier ones only included major leagues, the more recent ones have grown to include Chinese CSL and J-league from Japan.
