Highest-Paying Sports Contracts by Annual Value
About This Dataset
Highest-Paying Sports Contracts by Annual Value
The same contracts divided by their length, which is the fairer comparison between a two-year deal and a fifteen-year one. Annual value is guaranteed pay only: endorsements, image rights and performance bonuses sit outside the contract and are often worth more than it.
Analysis
Cristiano Ronaldo earns $355,015,000 a year under his 2025-2027 deal at Al Nassr, 1.65 times the $214,534,727 of his own 2023-2025 contract. 6 of the 12 highest annual salaries are in basketball. 12 of them pay $50 million a year or more. The lowest on this chart still pays $56,000,000 a year.
Key Findings
🏆
Cristiano Ronaldo (Al Nassr, 2025-2027) leads in Average Pay per Year (US$) with 355,015,000 in 2026.
📊
Average Average Pay per Year (US$) in 2026: 109,153,892 · median: 66,400,000.
↔️
Gap in 2026: Cristiano Ronaldo (Al Nassr, 2025-2027) is 6.3× larger than Karl-Anthony Towns (Minnesota Timberwolves*, 2024-2028).
Data Insights
Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart
Methodology & source
- Data source
- Wikipedia, List of largest sports contracts
- Coverage
- 12 entities · 2026 · 12 observations
- Measure
- Average Pay per Year (US$)
- Last updated
- 7 September 2026
- Compiled by
- The ANYSTAT team, from the source above
How the figures are calculated
- Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
- Entities are ranked highest-first on their value in 2026.
Data Sources & References
All external sources cited in this dataset
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