Professional football is a lucrative business in 2023 and the 10 highest-paid players on the planet – who play for clubs like Chelsea, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Liverpool – are raking in huge sums both in wages and sponsorship deals.
Footballers’ salaries at the very top end of the game have risen exponentially in recent years, especially following the entrance onto the scene of huge multinationals, oligarchs and oil states as club owners.
Players have also benefitted from the popularity of the game to sign significant endorsement deals, which in a few cases can earn them almost as much as their salary.
Here, we look at the top 10 highest-earning football stars on the planet in 2023, with figures from Sportico’s Kurt Badenhausen*, an expert in professional sportspeople’s earnings.
Note: in line with the Sportico figures, we use US Dollars as the currency and transfers that took place in January 2023 have been fact-checked with other sources.
10. Antoine Griezmann – $27.5m ($22m salary, $5.5m endorsements)
Griezmann is in a very odd situation at the moment.
A clause in the contract that Atletico signed to take him back from Barcelona on loan says that if he plays more than half the games for which he is available during the whole two-year loan spell, then Atletico are obliged to pay €40million to sign him permanently. That clause also defines playing a game as playing 45 minutes or more.
As such, Atletico are only deploying him for around half an hour plus stoppage time in their games this season and attempting to renegotiate the clause with Barca at the same time.
Pretty unfortunate for Griezmann, but he still pockets his $22million salary so we shouldn’t think he’s crying himself to sleep at night.
9. Kevin De Bruyne – $29m ($25.5m salary, $3.5m endorsements)
De Bruyne has almost certainly been the best player in the world’s most lucrative league over the last five seasons and plays for a club owned by the Abu Dhabi Royal Family, so it’d be weird if he wasn’t in this top 10.
.@KevinDeBruyne 🤝 @BernardoCSilva #ManCity pic.twitter.com/ZfUyN5NvcC
— Manchester City (@ManCity) August 21, 2022
8. Raheem Sterling – $29.4m ($21.4m salary, $8m endorsements)
While Sterling wasn’t earning as much as De Bruyne at Man City and still isn’t at his new club Chelsea, his marketability puts him above the Belgian here.
Sterling has big deals with New Balance for his boots and with Apple for all of his technological…
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