Forbes conducted its annual study to find out which footballer was the highest paid this year. No intrigue happened: back on December 30, 2022, when it became known that Ronaldo was moving to the Arab club An-Nasr, it became clear that he would become the highest paid football player. 200 million euros a year is a record salary even by football standards.
Therefore, Ronaldo expectedly took first place in the top. His income for the year was about $260 million before taxes and agent fees. The net profit will be much less. Of these 260 million, 200 are club salaries and other bonuses and “only” 60 are advertising contracts. What’s interesting: over 10 years in sports, Ronaldo earned about $961 million. That is, he received more than a quarter of the total income in just 1 year.
Messi is in second place in the ranking. He moved to Inter Miami. They pay well there too, but they are far from Arab clubs. The football player’s earnings amounted to only $135 million. What’s interesting is that Messi earned slightly less than Ronaldo from sponsorship contracts: $70 million. But for his work at the club he received $65 million. 3 times less than Ronaldo.
Third place went to another football legend — Neymar. He is only $23 million behind Messi, receiving $112 million for the year. Of these, 90 million are salaries and only 22 are sponsorship contracts.
But the young but very successful football star, Kylian Mbappe, lost ground this year. In 2022, he was able to overtake everyone, but now he is only in 4th place in the top, having earned $110 million.
Places 5 to 10 look like this:
- Karim Benzema — $106 million;
- Erling Haaland — $58 million;
- Mohamed Salah — $53 million;
- Sadio Mane — $52 million;
- Kevin De Bruyne — $39 million;
- Harry Kane — $36 million.
It is unclear who will be at the top next year, but there is every reason to believe that no one will be able to beat Ronaldo: he received too lucrative a contract.