• Average basic pay of United first-team player calculated at £5.77m a year • Survey reveals Old Trafford club as fourth-highest payer in world sport

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Manchester United pay the highest wages in world football, according to the latest edition of the global sports salaries survey. Average basic first-team pay at the Premier League club has been calculated at £5.77m a year, or £110,962 per week.

United are ranked fourth in the overall sporting pay league behind the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, who pay an average annual salary of $8.7m (£6.9m), baseball’s New York Yankees ($7.68m) and another NBA team, the LA Clippers ($7.65m).

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The survey is based on the reported pay of almost 10,000 sportsmen at 333 teams in seven sports and is published by Sporting Intelligence.

Barcelona are the second highest football payers with an average annual salary of £5.65m, followed by Manchester City on £5.4m.

Last year United were ranked below City but United’s £145m close-season transfer splurge, which made Paul Pogba the world’s most expensive footballer and also led to the arrival of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, has inflated their wage bill.

The two Manchester clubs are the only Premier League teams in the overall sporting top 30, with Chelsea (34), Arsenal (47) and Liverpool (60) lagging well behind American sports teams, reflecting the pound’s fall against the dollar following Britain’s vote to leave the EU.

The Premier League remains the most lucrative global football league, with an average first-team pay of £48,766 a week. That represents a 32-fold increase on the annual figure of £77,000 for 1992-93, when the league began.

Further increases are expected after the Premier League agreed domestic and global television deals worth approximately £8bn for 2016-19.

Elsewhere in Europe, Bayern Munich are German football’s best payers, with Juventus topping the league in Italy. But China has emerged as a financial force, with the survey revealing that five of the world’s 14 best paid players are contracted there.

Ronaldo remains the world’s best paid footballer, on the equivalent of £365,000 a week, the survey said.

Television is also having a huge impact on the salaries for NBA stars, with the league negotiating a nine-year, $24bn deal in 2014.

The NBA contains six of the world’s top 10 richest teams and 14 of the top 20. The survey covers 17 leagues in football, baseball, basketball, NFL, cricket, ice hockey and Australian rules football.