Manchester United players earning half a million more than Manchester City players

According to the Global Sports Salaries Survey, Manchester United first-team players are earning on average half a million pounds a year more than Premier League champions Manchester City.


The Red Devils players are also picking up almost double what Tottenham are paying their first-team players.

However, Barcelona have become the first sports club to pay an average annually salary of more than £10m.

Juventus, Real Madrid and Manchester United are also among the top 10 spenders. The other six clubs all come from the NBA.

On average, Clubs in the Premier League are paying more than top-flight football clubs in any other country per match, although on a per-game basis, cricket's Indian Premier League and American football's NFL top the spending.

Premier League big spenders

Manchester City may have been the current Premier League Champions, but they are behind Manchester United this term on wages with the Old Trafford football club paying an average of £6,534,654 per annum to first-team players.

Yearly, City's bill comes in at £5,993,000, followed by Chelsea (£5,020,004), Liverpool (£4,862,963), Arsenal (£4,853,130) and Tottenham (£3,515,778).

Everton and West Ham follow closely behind Tottenham, while Cardiff, Huddersfield and Burnley occupy the bottom three - the Bluebirds are the only Premier League club to come in under £1m for the year.

Having said that, despite Burnley's average annual first-team wage of £1,603,197 making them to occupy third-bottom of the Premier League pile, the Clarets are still paying more to their first-team players than the likes of Monaco and RB Leipzig.

"The two Manchester clubs, United and City, remain clear of the rest in basic pay terms according to our calculations," say Sporting Intelligence, who conduct the survey.

"We thought last year that whichever of the pair achieved the most on the pitch would end up with the larger of the two overall wage bills (all staff) for 2017-18.

"In fact City won the league and had wages of £260m and United faltered but paid out £296m."

City finished as Premier League champions ahead of arch rivals United, but while Guardiola's side top the league again this season Mourinho's side have slipped to seventh.

Sporting Intelligence reports this was majorly down to United's return to the Champions League, but do point out few of Manchester City's wage bill occurs under the City Football Group.

Barça break the £10 million mark

Despite Barcelona becoming the first sports club in the world to pay an average of more than £10m a year to first-team squad, the Spanish champions have also broken the £200,000 wages barrier for the first time.

Averagely, first-team players at the Nou Camp earn £10,454,259 per annum, which translates to an average £201,043 per week.

The Champions League winner and La Liga rivals Real Madrid are second on the list with an annual average of £8,089,582, follow by Italian club Juventus as the third-highest paying football club at £6,726,615 on average per year.

Despite Barca and Real's dominance on the salary scale, the average Premier League yearly salary remains 36% more than that of La Liga and almost double the amount paid to players in Serie A.

NBA Oklahoma City Thunder are the highest-paying non-football club, keenly followed by Golden State Warriors, while aside football and basketball, it is Major League Baseball's Chicago Cubs who head the way as the 30th highest-paying sports club.

IPL and NFL pay most per game

With 14 games per season, the IPL tops the table for the average pay per player, per game at £274,624, while the NFL comes in at £138,354 for 16 games.

In comparison, during a 38-game season, Premier League teams are paying their players an average of £78,703 per match.

"Two notable things happened with IPL wages in 2018: they got bigger, and the outlay by different teams got closer together," says Sporting Intelligence.

"A new five-year TV rights deal, concluded last year for £1.96bn for 2018-2022, has come on stream. That guarantees the medium-term future of an event that has often struggled for certainty.”

"Uniquely, IPL salaries are pro-rated from weekly pay to annual pay because, again uniquely, IPL players typically have multiple different professional employers concurrently.”

"The vast majority of other teams in other leagues contract their players for at least a year at a time. You simply don't get NFL stars playing a season in the USA then another in Germany in the same year; or a Premier League player appearing freelance for six different teams in a campaign."