Australia’s A-League ranks 27th in the world for average salaries

Slightly north of Croatia and Sweden but south of Kazakhstan and Israel – the A-League’s financial standing might surprise many, but it shows the wealth that football’s economy can generate in unexpected areas.

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Slightly north of Croatia and Sweden but south of Kazakhstan and Israel – the A-League’s financial standing might surprise many, but it shows the wealth that football’s economy can generate in unexpected areas.

According to a major global survey of average salaries both in football and across other sports, the A-League ranks 27th in the world for the pay of its players, at an average per year of $181,000.

The well-regarded Sporting Intelligence website in the UK researches and publishes the annual survey, showing among other things an average salary for players in the English Premier League of $5.3m.

The SI figures also show that Barcelona is the highest-paying sports team in the world, with an average salary per player of $18.5m, while NBA clubs make up six of the top eight clubs.

The A-League will surprise both for those it is below and those where it pays more. In Saudi Arabia the average salary is more than $380,000 and in Canada it is almost $700,000.

Japanese superstar Keisuke Honda is on $2.9m at Melbourne Victory.

Yet most of the East European leagues pay less than the A-League’s headline average of $181,000, as do the competitions in India and Chile.

Though that figure for the A-League might look substantial, especially compared with a median Australian wage nationally of around $84,000, it includes the substantial sums earned by marquees across the league.

With Keisuke Honda earning $2.9m at Melbourne Victory (including half from FFA’s marquee fund), Siem de Jong at Sydney FC on $1.3m and Western Sydney’s Oriol Riera on a similar sum, the marquee wages distort the overall average significantly.

According to figures provided by Professional Footballers Australia, the average salary in the A-League for players within the salary cap of $3.05m (plus various cap-exempt allowances such as long-serving or homegrown players) is $130,000, taking more than $50,000 off the headline figure.

Milos Ninkovic is understood to be earning almost $1m a season at Sydney FC.

To drill that down further, Sydney FC have 22 contracted players, with an average salary of around $230,000. But that includes de Jong and Milos Ninkovic, understood to be on just shy of $1m.

Removing those players from the equation gives Sydney an average salary of around $145,000, a figure comprised of the salary cap minus what Sydney have left unspent, plus a variety of cap-exempt clauses that have been used to augment the wages of players such as Alex Brosque, Rhyan Grant and Aaron Calver.

All of those figures are literally a world away from the salaries earned at the elite level in European football and, in the US, top-flight basketball and baseball.

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