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Liverpool FC first team players earn an average of £67,486 a week – equivalent to around £3.51m per year.

It represents an astronomical sum of money but it still places Liverpool as only the 14th highest payers in major team sports, according to Sportingintelligence’s Global Sports Salaries survey (GSSS), compiled in association with ESPN The Magazine.

However despite an apparent desire to off-load some of their highest earners, Liverpool actually moved up from 20th highest payers in team sports the year before.

New kids on the block Paris St Germain emerge as the new biggest payers in sport, with average wages for a first team player of an astonishing £101,898 per week or almost £5.3m per year.

Five Premier League teams are featured in the top 20, which also includes baseball teams from MLB and basketball teams from the NBA.

The biggest payers in the Premier League are Manchester City, in third place in the overall list with an average £96,445 or just over £5m per year.

Premier League average wages

Manchester United in sixth (£89,988 per week/£4.68m per year), Chelsea in eighth (£83,713 per week/£4.35m per year) and Arsenal in tenth (£77,963 per week/£4.05m per year) are all confirmed as higher average payers of their first team squad than the Reds.

Interestingly Liverpool owners Fenway Sports Group’s other major sports team, baseball’s Boston Red Sox, have an almost identical pay structure with players earning an average of £63,703 per week or just over £3.3m per year, placing at 17th on the list.

The Reds Sox are baseball’s sixth biggest payers while Liverpool are the fifth biggest payers in the Premier League and ninth in football, with PSG, Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich the non-English clubs who pay more.

Everton featured at number 90, players earning an average £1.63m per year or £31,447 per week.

In his introduction to the report, Nick Harris from SportingIntelligence said: “The GSSS looks solely at earnings for playing sport, not for endorsements or other extra-curricular activities. The 2015 report considers 333 teams in 17 leagues across 13 countries in seven sports: football, baseball, basketball, gridiron, cricket, ice hockey and Australian Rules football.

“The NBA is the highest-paying league as a whole, with 448 players at 30 teams in the 2014-15 season earning an average of £2.67m per year each, or $4.58m each on average.

“The Premier League is the best paying football league in the world, with average annual pay at £2.23m per player.”

The Premier League salaries were calculated as of summer last year.

Harris added: “Many of the best-paying teams have super-rich owners with multiple interests in sport. Stan Kroenke, worth $6.3bn, is the major stakeholder in Arsenal and his other teams include a second top-20 payer, the Denver Nuggets.

“John W Henry, worth $1.61bn, also owns two top-20 teams, Liverpool and the Red Sox, via his Fenway Sports Group.

“The Glazer family, worth $4.4bn, own Manchester United of the EPL and the Tampa Bay Bucs of the NFL, at No131 on this year’s list. Mike Ilitch, worth $5bn, owns the Detroit Tigers at No12 and the Detroit Red Wings of the NHL at No92. James L Dolan, whose family wealth is estimated at $4.5bn, owns the New York Knicks at No15 and the New York Rangers of the NHL at No74. “Russian billionaires Roman Abramovich and Mikhail Prokhorov also own ‘big’, rich teams in Chelsea and the Brooklyn Nets respectively.

“Yet all of these mega-wealthy people look like financial small fry against the owners of PSG and Manchester City. Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, which draws from the same resources that fund PSG’s owners QSI, has an estimated $304bn under investment. The sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi, which includes City’s owner Sheikh Mansour on its board of directors, has assets estimated at $773bn.

"The richest sports teams in the world are increasingly running on oil.”

SALARY TOP 20 PAYERS PER YEAR AND WEEK (last year position in brackets)

1 (New) PSG Ligue 1 £5,298,693 (£101,898)

2 (4) Real Madrid La Liga £5,040,520 (£96,933)

3 (1) Manchester City EPL £5,015,122 (£96,445)

4 (5) Barcelona La Liga £4,715,116 (£90,675)

5 (3) Los Angeles Dodgers MLB £4,679,937 (£89,999)

6 (8) Manchester United EPL £4,679,377 (£89,988)

7 (7) Bayern Munich Bundesliga £4,468,643 (£85,935)

8 (10) Chelsea EPL £4,353,056 (£83,713)

9 (2) New York Yankees MLB £4,263,577 (£81,992)

10 (11) Arsenal EPL £4,054,066 (£77,963)

11 (6) Brooklyn Nets NBA £3,645,286 (£70,102)

12 (13) Detroit Tigers MLB £3,620,913 (£69,633)

13 (17) San Francisco Giants MLB £3,597,130 (£69,175)

14 (20) Liverpool EPL £3,509,286 (£67,486)

15 (12) NY Knicks NBA £3,431,128 (£65,983)

16 (29) Washington Nationals MLB £3,317,177 (£63,792)

17 (15) Boston Red Sox MLB £3,312,564 (£63,703)

18 (26) LA Clippers NBA £3,111,928 (£59,845)

19 (37) Sacramento Kings NBA £2,960,046 (£56,924)

20 (35) Denver Nuggets NBA £2,939,555 (£56,530)