Sporting Rich List

Have any doubts that soccer is the world’s sport? Then look no further than the money.

In the third annual Forbes list of the ten richest sporting events in the world, soccer again reigns supreme. Four of the top five spots on the list are occupied by soccer tournaments. The richest sporting event in the world? The UEFA Champions League. This year’s title winner, Bayern Munich, lifted the 20-pound trophy and a cool $65 million to go along with it.

The Champions League pays out more than twice that of the most prestigious tournament in soccer—and the world—the FIFA World Cup. Spain, which won the most recent World Cup in 2010, received $31 million for the victory, good enough for number two on our list.

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To construct this list, we focused on the prize money paid out to the winner of either a single event or a tournament (and one that’s either annual, biannual or quadrennial). We did not include an event’s total prize money, or any season-long competitions that do not end in a playoff tournament, like theBarclays Premier League. We also did not include boxing matches, which are generally one-off events (and not annual, biannual or quadrennial “tournaments”) with fluctuating purses.

The highest-ranking American sporting event? It’s not the Super Bowl. It’s the World Series. In last year’s event, the San Francisco Giants swept the Detroit Tigers, earning $377,000 per player for a total of $19 million, good enough for number four on the list. The Super Bowl-winning Baltimore Ravens made $11 million (number 6 on the list), for a total of $11 million.

M99 wrote:Football

CBarca wrote:The Europa League pays more than the Super Bowl?

iftikhar wrote:The problem with Europa League is that the spread of prize money is very poor. I'm not sure, but I think in CL there's a €1.5 million prize for each match while it's €200K for EL.

CBarca wrote:The Europa League pays more than the Super Bowl?