The World’s Highest-Paid Athletes
By Kurt Badenhausen, Forbes Staff
Elite athletes are earning more than ever thanks to soaring salaries driven by ever-richer TV contracts. The cutoff to crack the world’s 100 highest-paid athletes is $25 million this year, compared with $17.3 million five years ago.
Forbes has tracked the leading earners in sports for three decades, and only seven athletes have landed in the top spot since 1990 (Tiger Woods holds the record with 12 times at No. 1). Global soccer icon Lionel Messi adds an eighth name to the roll call this year and, after longtime rival Cristiano Ronaldo, is only the second soccer player to rank first.
The top 100 spans 10 sports and includes athletes from 25 countries. Their $4 billion in combined earnings from prize money, salaries and endorsements between June 2018 and June 2019 is up 5% from last year, when Floyd Mayweatherwas first with $285 million.
ORIGINAL NOTE: https://www.forbes.com/athletes/#2c56ad8955ae
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THE 2019 LIST
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BEHIND THE NUMBERS
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Newcomers Delight
NFL contracts for elite stars carry huge upfront signing bonuses, pushing this quartet of gridiron greats to career-high paydays and their first appearances on the top 100. They are joined by Philadelphia’s new $330 million slugger.
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Basketball Rules
Thirty-five NBAers made the cut, with cumulative earnings of $1.3 billion. Credit basketball’s skyrocketing player salaries driven by a near doubling of the salary cap over the past five years. Tennis players make four times as much from endorsements and appearance fees as from prize money.
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USA vs The World
More than half of the top 100 earners play in the NFL or the NBA, giving Americans the advantage on total earnings, but the rich endorsement portfolios of international tennis and soccer stars mean higher average earnings for those outside the U.S.
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Rising Tides
The top earner in sports has regularly banked more than $100 million annually since Tiger Woods rose to prominence in the 2000s, but the major shift is the rise of the next class of paychecks. The earnings for the tenth-highest-paid player is up 150% in 15 years.
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