Premier League footballers earn £2.3million a year each on average, or £43,717 a week, giving them wages almost 60 per cent bigger in 2014 than their closest earnings rivals in Germany's Bundesliga, an exclusive Sportsmail study of football leagues around the world has revealed.

Players in Germany's top division earn £1.46m a year on average, or £28,011 a week, with players in Italy's Serie A next best remunerated on £1.3m a year (£25,263 a week), followed by those in Spain's La Liga on £1.2m a year (£23,327 a week).

France's Ligue 1 follows La Liga, with players averaging £988,000 a year, then the Russian Premier League is next on £902,000 before a drop to the only other league where players earn more than £500,000 a year - Brazil's top division, where average yearly pay is £583,000.

Scroll down to see full table of average player earnings for global professional leagues

Premier League stars such as Wayne Rooney (left) earn an average of £2.3million a year, almost 60 per cent more than Bundesliga players such as Bayern Munich's Arjen Robben (right)

Average wages in Ligue 1 have been pushed up by PSG's spending big on stars like Zlatan Ibrahimovic

Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo (left) earns considerably more than the La Liga average of £23,327 a week, while Serie A players such as Paul Pogba (right) earn an average of £25,263

Players in England's Championship are next, earning £486,000 on average, a staggering sum for a second tier - and higher than most top divisions around the world. The Sportsmail study has considered 34 leagues from across Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia.

Players in Major League Soccer, where Frank Lampard will star next year for Sheikh Mansour's New York City FC, are earning an average of £135,945 in 2014 - or £2,614 a week.

That puts them in 22nd place of the 34 leagues, where the bottom three slots are occupied by Croatia's Prva League and the top divisions in South Africa and Nigeria.

The average annual player wage in Croatia of £45,500 is roughly the same as the average weekly wage in the Premier League.

In South Africa the average annual pay is £33,659 a year and in Nigeria, where domestic football has been in crisis, it is just £6,776 a year, or £130 a week.

The Russian Premier League pays the sixth best wages, with players earning an average of £17,338 a week

These extraordinary numbers are detailed for the first time today as part of a wide-ranging study by Sportsmail of leagues around the globe and how they compare - for players and fans.

Money is one thing considered, as are crowd levels, ticket prices, goals, the quality of the managers in each league, the leagues' relative success in club competitions at continental level, the 'stardust' factor in each league, talent production levels, competitive balance, each league's contribution to their national team, and governance.

Wage levels across all leagues generally mirror income levels of income, with higher-earning leagues spending more on salaries. The massive wages paid to Premier League players are made possible because of huge revenues, largely driven by enormous TV contracts, domestic and international.

Championship clubs such as Fulham pay their players an average of £9,347 a week in England's second tier

The Premier League is by far the richest league in the world, with the 20 clubs now earning an average of around £155 million per season. This is underpinned by a domestic TV deal with Sky and BT worth £1bn each year, overseas TV deals in 212 countries bringing in £733 million a year and assorted other highlights, near-live and clip deals bringing in hundreds of millions more.

To put the incredible money-making in perspective, the Premier League now earns a similar amount from selling goal clip rights to the UK mobile market alone as Scottish domestic football does combined from all its live television rights - about £15million a year.

Scotland's Premiership comes in at No 18 in the pay table, with players earning an average of around £183,000 a year, although this has fallen with the absence of Glasgow giants Rangers from the top flight and will continue to drop while the Edinburgh pair of Hearts and Hibernian remain below elite level, as they are this season.

It is worth stressing that the average figure for each league is just that - total spending on all player wages divided by the total number of players.

Manchester United midfielder Angel di Maria is among the best-paid players in the Premier League

There are big variations in average pay between the highest and lowest paid clubs within every league in the world.

The Premier League is no exception, and pay levels range from £4m to £5m per player at the wealthiest clubs - Manchester City and United, Chelsea, with Arsenal catching up by the season - to £1m a year or so per man at the smallest and most prudent clubs, notably Burnley and Leicester this season.

But one extraordinary fact about the English top-flight now is that every club from top to bottom earns between £62m and £100m in central income each year from the Premier League and the majority are capable of paying £2.3m-a-year salaries - and do.

Given the relatively modest pay levels at the vast majority of leagues and even at most clubs even in Europe's 'Big Five' leagues, the financial advantage of Premier League clubs should mean, in theory, they can offer more attractive terms and attract better players than those leagues and clubs.

That is the theory at least. Whether the league makes the most of its richest is explored elsewhere in the study.

Everton were able to give Romelu Lukaku (right) a £70,000 a week deal when he joined from Chelsea

The Premier League remains the most attractive football division in the world for global footballing talent, with more than 100 stars of the 2014 World Cup finals making a living at the 20 top-flight clubs.

Although Spain is widely — and rightly — seen as the destination of choice for a handful of the very biggest names, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Neymar and James Rodriguez, it is not so much La Liga as a whole that is the draw than its two biggest clubs, Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Spain as a whole is home to only 50 players on show at last year’s World Cup, whereas the Premier League leads the way with 112 such players, ahead of Serie A (with 81) and Germany’s Bundesliga (75).

Big names from most of the ‘smaller’ leagues providing dozens of players to the World Cup include the Russian Premier League (34), Turkey’s Super League (26), Liga MX in Mexico (26) and America’s MLS (24).

Another measure of each’s league’s ‘pulling power’ is their clubs’ ability to spend large sums on transfer fees to help lure big names.

In this respect, La Liga — or rather the big two clubs there — led the way in 2014, with Barca’s signing of Suarez for around £75m being La Liga’s biggest buy.

Luis Suarez topped the bill as the biggest signing after Barcelona forked out £75million for the striker

The Premier League’s biggest buy was Di Maria by United (£59.7m), whereas the biggest buys in Italy and Germany were both around the £20m mark.

Only four other leagues in the world had any top-price 2014 purchase at £10m or more: PSG in France bought David Luiz for £50m, Zenit of Russia bought Javi Garcia for £13m, Santos of Brazil signed Leandro Damiao for £10.2m, and Fulham of the Championship bought Leeds’ Ross McCormack for £11m.

Premier League attendance levels last season were the highest in England’s top division for 64 years and more people attend Premier League games than in any league in the world at almost 14 million.

Only Germany’s Bundesliga can top the Premier League in terms of fans attending per game.

The Bundesliga’s figure of 42,609 fans per game is the biggest average in world football and the second biggest average in global professional sport — after America’s NFL.

The Premier League averaged 36,695 fans per game last season to be the second best attended football league per game by some margin ahead of La Liga in third (26,955 fans per game), followed by Italy’s Serie A (23,385), with Mexico’s LigaMX (22,271) pushing France’s Ligue 1 (21,155) out of the top five.

The Dutch Eredivisie and MLS in the USA and Canada are the seventh and eighth best attended leagues with more than 19,000 fans per game each.

With an average fan attendance of 42,609 the Bundesliga boasts the highest amount in world football

The study looked at 34 leagues around the world, including the top divisions from 33 nations across Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia — plus the Championship from England.

The Premier League has the biggest aggregate attendance (13.94m), with the Bundesliga (13m) second and La Liga (10.2m) third, followed by the Championship, where the 552 games between the 24 teams were watched by 9.2m last season.

The Scottish Premiership is 21st on the list of 34 with 10,228 fans per game but that is down considerably since Rangers were demoted. It will be down again this season, with both Hearts and Hibs playing outside the top flight.

GOALS PER GAME 1. Austria - 3.31 goals per game 2. Holland - 3.20 goals per game 3. Germany - 3.16 goals per game 4. Sweden - 2.93 goals per game 5. Norway - 2.89 goals per game ---------------------------------------------------------- 10. Premier League - 2.77 goals per game 11. Spain - 2.75 goals per game 13. Scotland - 2.75 goals per game 15. Italy - 2.72 goals per game Advertisement

The Premier League is often described as the most exciting division in world football, and it certainly matches Spain’s La Liga when it comes to scoring, with the rival leagues almost identical in terms of goals per game.

But both are outstripped by Germany’s Bundesliga among their ‘Big 5’ league rivals and fans of nine other major leagues around the world see more goals per game.

The Austrian Bundesliga has more goals per game than anywhere, pipping the Dutch and German leagues.

Scotland’s Premiership is a middle-ranking league in goals terms, with 2.75 scored per game last season putting it in 13th place.

The Premier League remains the most attractive football division in the world for global footballing talent, with more than 100 stars of the 2014 World Cup finals making a living at the 20 top-flight clubs.

Although Spain is widely — and rightly — seen as the destination of choice for a handful of the very biggest names, including Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez, Neymar and James Rodriguez, it is not so much La Liga as a whole that is the draw than its two biggest clubs, Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Spain as a whole is home to only 50 players on show at last year’s World Cup, whereas the Premier League leads the way with 112 such players, ahead of Serie A (with 81) and Germany’s Bundesliga (75).

Big names from most of the ‘smaller’ leagues providing dozens of players to the World Cup include the Russian Premier League (34), Turkey’s Super League (26), Liga MX in Mexico (26) and America’s MLS (24).

Another measure of each’s league’s ‘pulling power’ is their clubs’ ability to spend large sums on transfer fees to help lure big names.

In this respect, La Liga — or rather the big two clubs there — led the way in 2014, with Barca’s signing of Suarez for around £75m being La Liga’s biggest buy.

The Premier League’s biggest buy was Di Maria by United (£59.7m), whereas the biggest buys in Italy and Germany were both around the £20m mark.