All eyes are on Las Vegas this week as the world’s richest sports league takes center stage with the Super Bowl. The NFL is a financial juggernaut by almost any metric, including record sponsorships, franchises worth $5.1 billion on average and 93 of the top 100 broadcasts on TV in 2023.
But when it comes to athlete earnings, NFL players can’t touch their global football counterparts. Soccer stars represent four of the six highest-paid athletes on the planet, as well as seven of the top 25—the NFL lands just two inside the top 25 (Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson).
Cristiano Ronaldo leads the way with $275 million, thanks to the richest on-field contract in sports and an off-field endorsem*nt portfolio befitting a person with 620 million Instagram followers. Rounding out the top five: Jon Rahm ($203 million), Lionel Messi ($130 million), LeBron James ($125.7) and Kylian Mbappé ($125 million), based on estimated earnings for 2023 through Dec. 31.
Sportico connected with more than 40 people familiar with on- and off-field athlete contracts, including those at teams, leagues, sports agencies, promotion firms and consultancies to determine the 100 highest paid in 2023 who were active at some point during the year. It includes athletes from eight sports and 25 countries, who earned an estimated $5.4 billion last year. The total includes $4.2 billion in salary and prize money, as well as $1.2 billion from sponsors, memorabilia, appearances and more.
Two major themes emerge: the influence of Saudi Arabia sports investment, and no women in the top 100.
Click here for the full list of 100 and a detailed methodology.
Saudi $
Money from Saudi Arabia flows through the top 100, with the country viewing sports as a way to diversify the country’s economy through the Saudi Vision 2030 plan revealed in 2016 by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi’s $700 billion-plus sovereign wealth fund, Public Investment Fund (PIF), controls those purse strings.
Novak Djokovic ($44.9 million, No. 46) and Carlos Alcaraz ($42.2 million, No. 56) played a December Saudi exhibition that netted both tennis players seven-figure appearance fees; they will be back in October for another lucrative exhibition. Boxer Tyson Fury ($40 million, No. 64) earned an estimated $32 million purse for his October victory over Francis Ngannouin Saudi Arabia and is set for a much bigger payday there for a May title bout versus Oleksandr Usyk.
But it is in soccer and golf that the Saudis and PIF have invested most heavily. Ronaldo was the first blockbuster name to move to the Saudi Pro League when he joined Al-Nassr in January 2023 under a deal that pays an estimated $215 million annually. During the summer, Neymar ($121 million, No. 6), Karim Benzema ($78 million, No. 12) and Sadio Mané ($38 million, No. 70) made the move. Listed earnings for all of these players are based on a combination of their salaries from the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons.
LIV Golf, which is funded by PIF, signed its first batch of players in 2022, including Brooks Koepka ($46.7 million, No. 39), Cameron Smith ($43.3 million, No. 51) and Dustin Johnson ($35.7 million, No. 86), who all received signing bonuses of at least $100 million. Most of those payments were doled out in 2022, but portions were paid in 2023. The bonuses acted as an enticement and helped make up for any lost endorsem*nt earnings after the move.
LIV didn’t poach any major PGA Tour stars in 2023 until December, when Rahm changed sides in golf’s Cold War after a huge year on the course that generated $53 million in prize money, endorsem*nts and bonuses. Reports put his signing bonus at anywhere from $300 million to $600 million, but multiple people familiar with LIV contracts pegged the deal at the lower number and estimated half was paid up front. Rahm's agency Sportfive would not comment on the bonus. LIV prize money has also been a windfall, highlighted by Talor Gooch ($40.2 million, No. 61), who finished on top of the tour’s 2023 money list.
“The sports industry has always chased the dollars,” Rick Burton, a sports management professor at Syracuse University, said in a phone interview. “These athletes are looking at creating multi-generational wealth for their families. It’s free market capitalism, and they are exercising their right to see what the market will bear.”
The bank accounts of remaining PGA Tour players benefited from the tour’s new “elevated” events and a 33% increase to 2023 purses. Rory McIlroy ($77.4 million, No. 13), Scottie Scheffler and Viktor Hovland (both $52.3 million and tied No. 27) earned more than $30 million apiece in prize money and tour bonuses for the year on top of their lucrative marketing agreements.
Men Only
This is Sportico’s third annual look at the world’s highest-paid athletes, but the first time that only men make the cut. Missing from the list are mainstays Serena Williams, who retired in 2022, and Naomi Osaka, who sat out the 2023 tennis season to give birth to her daughter Shai. Over the prior 15 years, fellow tennis stars Maria Sharapova and Li Na ranked among the world’s highest-paid athletes.
Salaries for a broad number of professional female athletes have increased in recent years. The NWSL recently doubled its salary cap, and the LPGA has steadily increased its prize money. But tennis remains the clearest avenue for female athletes to post the biggest earnings—seven of the eight highest-paid female athletes last year were tennis players.
Coco Gauff ranked first in 2023 with an estimated $22.7 million from prize money, endorsem*nts and appearances. The 19-year-old’s star is rising quickly, and there is a world where her earnings catapult higher into the Serena/Osaka range. The tricky part is that the cutoff to crack the top 100 rises annually as salaries in team sports escalate, fueled largely by bigger media contracts.
The cutoff this year is $32.5 million (New Orleans Saints quarterback Derek Carr), versus $29.6 million in Sportico’s May 2022 study of the top earners. Gauff’s 2023 earnings would not have cracked a list of the world’s 200 highest-paid athletes, by our count.
By the Numbers
The $5.4 billion in earnings for the top 100 is up 21% over our previous rankings. The endorsem*nt earnings component is flat as sponsors monitor their spending, but the salary side is up 29%.
The top of the financial table is very international with nine countries represented in the top 15, but Americans dominate the action the rest of the way with 66 total entries in the top 100, thanks largely to high salaries in the NBA, NFL and MLB. France and England are the only other countries with more than two athletes, with Mbappé ranked first among the three French athletes and Lewis Hamilton ($62 million, No. 19) on top of the three Brits.
Basketball players make up 40% of the top 100, followed by football (16%), baseball (13%), soccer (11%), golf (10%), boxing (6%), tennis (2%) and racing (2%). Cricket, MMA and hockey were all shut out.
Ten athletes under 26 years old qualified, and 10 older than 38 cracked the top 100, but the youngest and oldest are both in a class by themselves. The 20-year-old Alcaraz is nearly three years younger than anyone else in the top 100—Manchester City star Erling Haaland ($63 million, No. 18) is next.
At 48, Tiger Woods ($77.2 million, No. 14) is a full seven years older than Houston Astros pitcher Justin Verlander ($44.5 million, No. 48). The 15-time major winner played only three events last year and earned just $190,000 in prize money during his recovery from ankle and foot surgery. But he is still a marketing force with sponsors Bridgestone, Hero, Monster Energy, Rolex and TaylorMade—our earnings include his lucrative Nike deal, which lapsed at the end of 2023. Woods also finished second in the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program, which carried a $12 million bonus and represents almost his entire "prize money."
The Los Angeles Clippers are the only team with more than three players in the top 100, with the quartet of Russell Westbrook ($54 million, No. 25), James Harden ($51.6 million, No. 29), Paul George ($51.1 million, No. 31) and Kawhi Leonard ($50.1 million, No. 33) all tightly bunched. NBA teams with three entries on the list included the Boston Celtics, Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Milwaukee Bucks, New Orleans Pelicans and Phoenix Suns, while the New York Yankees were the only team outside the NBA with three players in the top 100.
