It’s no secret that the players at Paris Saint-Germain are very well compensated for their services and thanks to a new report from Sporting Intelligence called the Global Sports Salaries Survey (GSSS), we now know how PSG compares to other elite football clubs and other sports teams around the world.
The report, which you can download here, analyzed 350 teams from 8 sports in 18 leagues and 12 countries. The data from 10,070 players is a bit overwhelming but here is what you need to know when it comes to PSG.
PSG Salaries Rank 12th in the World
FC Barcelona may want you to think they rely on their academy for players and build their team the right way, but the fact is they pay the highest annual salaries of any team in any sport in the world (€11.08 million)! Their La Liga rivals Real Madrid are right behind them in second and kings of the free transfer, Juventus FC, come in third.
After eight National Basketball Teams, that’s where you’ll find PSG in 12th place with an average annual pay of €8.06 million. The reigning French champions pay better than every other Premier League club with Manchester City ranking the highest in 13th place with an average salary of €7.88 million per player.
PSG Dominates Ligue 1
As you would expect, PSG dominates their domestic league when it comes to player salaries despite the entire league seeing a 4.9 percent increase in the average salary per player year-over-year.
AS Monaco comes in second with an average annual salary of €2.56 million and Olympique Lyonnais is third with €2.10 million. PSG’s rivals, Olympique de Marseille, trail in fourth place with an average annual salary of €1.81 million.
Nîmes Olympique has the honor of being the team with the lowest average annual salary at €269,176. According to the report’s snapshot analysis, “the ratio between the highest payers in the league (PSG) and the lowest payers (Nîmes) is 29.93 to 1, the highest ratio of any GSSS league.”
Social Popularity
Bringing the best players to Paris has paid off for PSG in terms of social media followers. Across Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, the capital club has a total of more than 71 million followers. Marseille is second with slightly more than 9.8 million followers across all profiles.
PSG has captured more than half of Ligue 1’s popularity on social media (64 percent) while paying 34 percent of all wages.
Conclusion
To the executives at Ligue 1, you need to start making better deals with broadcast partners and be more innovative in your approach. If the overseas rights for Serie A can go for €379 million, per the report, Ligue 1 has to do better than €80 million.
Additional money into the league from more lucrative broadcast contracts should help owners of Ligue 1 teams invest in their squads and pay higher salaries to keep their young talent in France instead of selling to the highest bidder every season.
It’s not PSG’s fault they have the financial backing to buy the best players and pay them the salaries they expect. It’s up to the league to grow financially and for the other teams to find ways to keep their best players in the country in order to compete with PSG every season.
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