Who Gets Paid More: NFL or MLB Players?

The average NFL player salary is $2.7 million per year, while the average MLB player salary is $4 million per year. So which players get paid more?

NFL vs MLB Salaries

Many people often wonder how much professional athletes get paid. With there being so many different types of professional sports, it can be hard to keep track of who gets paid the most. In this article, we will be looking at the average salaries of NFL and MLB players to see who gets paid more.

NFL salaries

In the NFL, the average career lasts just over three years, and the average player’s salary is $2 million. That’s a pretty good haul for such a short career, but it’s not nearly as much as Major League Baseball players make. In MLB, the average salary is $4 million, and the average career lasts five years. So while NFL players may make more money per year on average, MLB players make more money over the course of their careers.

MLB salaries

On average, MLB salaries are much higher than those in the NFL. In 2018, the average MLB salary was $4.1 million while the average NFL salary was $2.7 million. MLB teams also have a higher payroll than NFL teams. In 2018, the average MLB payroll was $130 million while the average NFL payroll was $87 million.

There are a few reasons for this discrepancy. Firstly, MLB players are free to sign with any team that offers them the most money, whereas NFL players are subject to a salary cap that limits how much their team can pay them. Secondly, MLB teams play 162 games per season while NFL teams only play 16. This means that MLB players have more opportunities to earn money through things like performance bonuses and winnings from individual games. Finally, baseball has been around for much longer than football and has always been a more popular sport than football, which means that there is more revenue generated by baseball and this revenue is shared among the players.

NFL vs MLB Player Contracts

The average NFL player salary is $1.9 million per year, while the average MLB player salary is $4.4 million per year. NFL players make an average of $48,000 per game, while MLB players make an average of $73,000 per game. NFL players are paid a lower salary because the NFL has a salary cap, while MLB does not.

NFL player contracts

NFL player contracts are not fully guaranteed, unlike those in the MLB. In recent years, the NFL has made an effort to give players more guaranteed money up front in their contracts in order to stay competitive with the MLB and to avoid having players hold out for more money. However, NFL contracts still tend to be structured so that the team can get out of them more easily than an MLB team can get out of a player contract. This is because NFL teams are only committed to paying a player for the length of his contract, whereas MLB teams are on the hook for a percentage of the total value of a player’s contract even if they release him before it expires.

MLB player contracts

While the average MLB salary has jumped in recent years, it still lags behind the average NFL salary. In 2019, the average MLB salary was $4 million, while the average NFL salary was $2.7 million.

However, that doesn’t mean that every MLB player is making more than every NFL player. In fact, there are a number of reasons why some NFL players make more money than their MLB counterparts.

First, NFL contracts are typically shorter than MLB contracts. This means that NFL players have a chance to sign a new contract and get a raise more often than MLB players.

Second, NFL teams are allowed to sign players to “non-guaranteed” contracts. This means that the team can release the player at any time without having to pay them the rest of their contract. In contrast, all MLB contracts are guaranteed, so teams can’t release players without paying them for the duration of their contract.

Lastly, NFL teams have a salary cap that they must stay under when signing players to contracts. The salary cap is much higher than it is in MLB, so NFL teams have more money to spend on player salaries. For example, in 2019 the salary cap for an NFL team was $188 million while the luxury tax threshold (the amount a team can spend above the salary cap) was $206 million. In contrast, the luxury tax threshold for an MLB team was just $206 million in 2019.

NFL vs MLB Revenue

In order to compare the salaries of NFL and MLB players, we must first look at the revenue of each league. The NFL made $13 billion in revenue in 2017, while the MLB made $9.5 billion. The NFL also has a higher salary cap than the MLB.

NFL revenue

In 2019, the NFL generated $8.78 billion in revenue from national sources, including $2.86 billion from television rights fees, $1.32 billion from NFL Ventures and $1.27 billion from NFL Media. The rest of the league’s revenue came from ticket sales, sponsorship deals and other sources.

The average NFL team is now worth $2.86 billion, up 8% from last year and more than triple the value of the average MLB team ($1.09 billion). The Dallas Cowboys are the most valuable sports franchise in the world at $5.5 billion, followed by the New York Yankees ($5 billion) and Barcelona ($4.76 billion).

MLB revenue

In Major League Baseball, the average player salary was $4.47 million in 2017. The MLB brought in $10.3 billion in revenue that year, meaning that players received 43% of league revenue. In 2018, the average player salary rose to $4.52 million, while revenue grew to $10.7 billion. That year, players received 42% of league revenue.

Conclusion

In conclusion, NFL players get paid more on average than MLB players. However, there are many factors that affect player salaries, such as position, experience, and team success. So while the average salary in the NFL is higher than in the MLB, there is a lot of variation between players in each league.