With each player taking home a handsome 8.32 million U.S. dollars every year, the NBA is the professional sports league with the highest player wages worldwide. In second place is the Indian Premier League, an annual cricket competition contested each year between eight franchises representing eight different Indian cities.

Big money in the NBA Although the wages that players in the NBA take home are astronomical, the average annual salaries vary from one team to another. Whilst the New York Knicks pay their players an average of 7.08 million U.S. dollars a year, Portland Trail Blazers spent around 10.04 million U.S. dollars annually on each of their stars in 2019/20. NBA salaries have tremendously increased throughout the years reaching 8.32 million U.S. dollars in 2019/20 compared to 4.6 million U.S. dollars in 2015/16.

The NBA and WNBA are the two top leagues for basketball in the United States for men and women, respectively. In the NBA, players took home an average annual salary of over 12 million U.S. dollars for the 2023/24 season, with the league's minimum salary set at 1.16 million U.S. dollars that year. In comparison, players in the WNBA received an average annual pay of 119.59 thousand U.S. dollars, with the highest-earning players in the WNBA receiving around 252 thousand U.S. dollars annually.