The Most Expensive Athletes in the World: Who Are They?
Are the most expensive athletes always in soccer?
Have you ever wondered who the best-salaried athletes in the world are? Well, you need not wonder any longer! Many such competitors have been making a name for themselves in sports – but also by leveraging their personality to make a decent living – and a little more than that!
Much like you would hope the roulette wheel numbers favour you, so have the athletes on our list sought greatness and financial outperformance.
They have attained both, allowing them to enjoy a comfortable living that has nevertheless come at a significant personal cost – the continuous training to ensure greatness in each of these people’s respective sports. Here are the best-paid athletes today.
| Cristiano Ronaldo | Soccer |
| LeBron James | Basketball |
| Lionel Messi | Soccer |
| Neymar | Soccer |
| Kylian Mbappé | Soccer |
| Karim Benzema | Soccer |
Are Soccer Players the Best Paid Ones?
A single look at the table of how much the top athletes make will tell you a clear story – if you want to get paid very well for your athletic prowess, you may want to head over to soccer. This is understandable and true. After all, Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar, Benzema, and Mbappé are all soccer players.
They earn astronomical figures that are somewhat justified. Soccer is a sport that puts a lot of value on exceptional play, and exceptional players are born and made. Even though the field is populated with fantastic players, there seems to be no end to the tremendous sums of money soccer players get paid anyway!
They all enjoy solid packages, and some, such as Ronaldo and Messi, make €200 million and $150 million, respectively – this is just from soccer for the most part, with a lot more wiggle room for sponsorships and other deals that present soccer players with the opportunity to leverage their brand and likeness further.
Ultimately, though, soccer players are not the only ones out there in the world of professional athletics.
Football – But American
Although the NFL is a chiefly US phenomenon, you will be surprised to learn how much the local stars make. Now, because the NFL is not global, soccer still outpaces it in terms of how much is earned per player contract, and nobody will quite hit the Ronaldo and Messi paychecks – even in the United States, Inter Miami is happy to pay Messi $150 million, and that is already a lot more than what the top NFL stars are making. In contrast, here are some of the paychecks collected by NFL stars:
- Dark Prescott – $100.3m
- Jared Goff – $85.6m
- Jordan Love – $81.5m
- Patrick Mahomes – $72.8m (his contract has gone up)
These are still super-lucrative contracts and tend to stand out by the value they add to the sport. Roulette 77 says that money is not always the determining factor in playing roulette.
Surprisingly, money is not always the determining factor in drafting players in the NFL season. Sure, you do want Prescott on your team, but the nature of the NFL is such that you can make do with the second, third or even fourth-best player. What you need, though, is to train them!
What about Other Sports?
Well, it depends on who the player is and what the sport is like. Alcaraz is one of the best tennis players out there, and he is already raking in $42.3 million, making him among the highest-paid athletes of all time, especially in a sport that is super cut-throat and where not too many people make it to the very top.
Is he the only one, though? We hardly think so. LeBron James is another highly paid athlete crossing the nine-figure threshold for his earnings with his $100 million-plus paycheck. The player has been able to leverage his brand and name and demonstrate how good business acumen goes well with one’s athletic prowess.
Of course, many other NBA and tennis players have been earning it big time. Djokovic, for example, is said to have a net worth of $240 million, and he seems to be an outstanding figure in tennis. Overall, the world of sports has become commercially viable, and it’s no surprise that people aspire to be among the very best in the world. Of course, the road to the top is often very hard, and it could even be blocked by many people who set out to try but ultimately fall genuinely short of this gargantuan task. Regardless, some sports athletes earn big time!
