Manchester City rise above Real Madrid and Barcelona to top the global pay charts - but where does your club feature?
The beaten FA Cup finalists pay over £100,000-a-week to their players on average
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Your support makes all the difference.Manchester City's staggering rise over the last five years was shown when they were announced as the highest paying club in any sport in the world.
City's stars now average £100,764 per week (or £5.2 million per year) according to Sportingintelligence's Global Sports Salaries Survey for 2013.
That figure means the former Premier League champions, who were taken over by Sheik Mansour in 2008, have the best paid players in any team sport. City sit above Real Madrid (£90,734-per-week) and Barcelona (£90,201-per-week) as one of three football teams in the top five. Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers (£93,380-per-week) sit in second place and the New York Yankees (£89,407-per-week) are fifth. The figures are collated from average first team pay to produce as close as possible between 278 teams in 14 leagues in seven sports across 10 countries where first-team squad can vary in size.
The figures cover a variety of sports including football, basketball, ice hockey, cricket and baseball and come from a variety of countries.
They do not however include France's Ligue One, where Paris St Germain and Monaco are becoming major players.
Monaco have given a clear indication of the size of their ambition by spending £110 million on new players already this summer. The French Ligue Two champions have bought Joao Moutinho, James Rodriguez and fought off competition for the signature of the Chilean forward Falcao by paying Atletico Madrid £50 million for the player.
Monaco were promoted from Ligue Two under former Chelsea manager Claudio Ranieri last summer but the desire of the billionaire Russian owner Dmitry Rybolovlev is to make the club into an international force.
Rybolovlev is reckoned to be worth around £6billion after selling his stake in the fertiliser producer Uralkali. When he bought a 66 per cent stake in Monaco in December 2011, the club was at the foot of Ligue Two. Since then the oligarch has ensured Monaco have become significant players in the transfer market. Monaco set a Ligue Two record for a player when the paid £6.3 million for Nabil Dirar. Last summer they broke it again by spending £9.5 million on River Plate's Lucas Ocampos.
Like PSG before them, Monaco are determined to make an impact in the European game.
The last eight winners of the Champions League are in the top 12 of the pay charts with Chelsea in eighth place and current Premier League champions Manchester United in 12th.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the list of English clubs then has Arsenal in 15th place (£70,503-per-week), Liverpool in 21st place (£64,551-per-week) and then Tottenham in 51st place (£50,538-per-week).
What may cause consternation is the relatively high placing of Aston Villa (£41,736-per-week), Sunderland (£35,938-per-week) and Newcastle (£34,815-per-week) who are all in the top 75 average payers. All three teams spent most of last season fighting for their Premier League futures at the foot of the table. Queens Park Rangers' players, who were relegated, also averaged a salary of £32,569-per week, enough to put them in 91st place.
Norwich City were the lowest payers from the Premier League in the table, sitting at 175th with their players earning £19,434 per week.
The figures for Premier League teams were from the season ended in 2012. That means those average weekly salaries are heading for a significant boost with the new television deal reckoned to be worth £600 million between the 20 Premier League sides.
Where the 20 Premier League clubs (from the 2011/12 season) featured on the GSSS...
1. Manchester City - £5,239,750 (£100,764)
8. Chelsea - £4,058,742 (£78,053)
12. Manchester United - £3,921,987 (£75,423)
15. Arsenal - £3,666,158 (£70,503)
21. Liverpool - £3,356,639 (£64,551)
51. Tottenham - £2,628,000 (£50,538)
64. Aston Villa - £2,170,280 (£41,736)
73. Sunderland - £1,868,800 (£35,938)
75. Newcastle - £1,810,400 (£34,815)
91. QPR - £1,693,600 (£32,569)
98. Everton - £1,622,031 (£31,193)
104. Fulham - £1,579,131 (£30,368)
118. Stoke - £1,467,600 (£28,223)
126. Blackburn Rovers - £1,419,287 (£27,294)
127. West Brom - £1,416,200 (£27,235)
136. Bolton - £1,375,739 (£26,457)
168. Wigan - £1,109,600 (£21,338)
171. Wolverhapton Wanderers - £1,080,400 (£20,777)
174. Swansea - £1,022,000 (£19,654)
175. Norwich - £1,010,560 (£19,434)
For the full list of teams, visit Sportingintelligence.com by clicking here.
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