The latest Global Sports Salary survey, in a report published by The Guardian, has estimated that cricketers in India's cash-rich Indian Premier League (IPL) earn more per match than players in any other sport, report agencies.
While English Premier League (EPL) remained the richest football league in the world, with first-team squad players earning £2.99m a year on average, IPL players earned an average £274,624 (per game) despite only playing 14 games, surpassing second placed NFL (£138,354) and the Premier League (£78,703) by a huge margin.
However, it is to be noted that Premier League players play a total of 38 games in the league alone and also feature in other club tournaments such as the FA Cup, Europa League and Champions League. Taking the entire season into consideration, the footballers earn more than the IPL players.
The report also revealed that IPL players pocketed more on average by playing between early April and late May than EPL club Tottenham Hotspur's players do across an entire season of English football.
Meanwhile, Barcelona have set a new salary-spend record by becoming the first team in any sport with an average wage per player of £10.45 million ($13.76 million) a year, according to the 2018 version of the salary survey.
This season, the Spanish giants will pay their first-team squad an average of over £200k ($265k) per week before bonuses, with that figure rising by 33 per cent since 2017-18.
Real Madrid, meanwhile, feature in second place in the table, with their players earning an average of £8.1m ($10.6m) a year.
The next six spots are all filled by teams from the NBA, with Oklahoma City Thunder and the Golden State Warriors in third and fourth overall with salary averages of £7.84m ($10.32m) and £7.82m ($10.33m) respectively.
Manchester United lead the way in terms of the highest annual salary spend for the Premier League, paying their players an average of £6.5m ($8.6m) per player, per year.
