In 2024/25, the 30 franchises comprising the National Basketball Association (NBA) recorded a total revenue amounting to **** billion U.S. dollars. This was an increase of over *** billion dollars from the previous year. What are the NBA's main sources of revenue? Among the NBA's main sources of income are broadcasting deals, sponsorships, and gate receipts. In particular, the NBA's sponsorship revenue has consistently exceeded one billion U.S. dollars since the 2017/18 season. One of the league's main sponsors since then has been Nike, which is the league's official outfitter. Meanwhile, the share of overall revenue from gate receipts in the NBA was around ** percent in 2024/25. Which NBA team generates the most revenue? With a revenue of *** million U.S. dollars, the Golden State Warriors were the NBA team with the highest revenue in the 2024/25 season. Between 2015 and 2023, the Warriors were a dominant force in the NBA, appearing in six of eight finals and winning four championships, ending their trophy drought stretching back to 1975. However, the Warriors still have some way to go to match the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers as the NBA teams with the most championships, with the Celtics winning a record **** championship title in 2024.

This dataset merges player per-game and advanced statistics for the NBA's 2022-23 season with player salary data, creating a comprehensive resource for understanding the performance and financial aspects of professional basketball players. The dataset is the result of web scraping player salary information from Hoopshype, and downloading traditional per-game and advanced statistics from Basketball Reference.

Key Features:

• Player Information: Player name, team(s) played for during the season.
• Per Game Statistics: A wide array of per-game statistics, including points scored (PPG), assists (APG), rebounds (RPG), steals (SPG), blocks (BPG), and more.
• Shooting Efficiency: Metrics like field goal percentage (FG%), three-point percentage (3P%), two-point percentage (2P%), and free throw percentage (FT%) for assessing scoring efficiency.
• Advanced Statistics: A wide array of advanced metrics such as value over replacement player (VORP), win shares (WS) and true shooting percentage (TS%)
• Salaries: The financial aspect of the dataset includes player salaries for the 2022-23 season, offering insights into player earning

Potential Uses:

• Player Performance Analysis: Analysts can evaluate player performance in correlation with their earnings, identifying players who provide strong value for their salaries.
• Team Budgeting and Strategy: Teams can use this dataset to assess the financial implications of player acquisitions, trades, and salary cap management.
• Player Earnings Insights: The dataset offers insights into the income distribution of NBA players, helping fans and analysts understand the financial side of professional basketball.
• Data-Driven Decisions: Data scientists can leverage this combined dataset for predictive modeling and machine learning applications, including salary predictions and player valuation.

Acknowledgements: Basketball Reference, Hoopshype

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 ** million U.S. dollars for the 2024/25 season, with the league's minimum salary set at **** million U.S. dollars that year. In comparison, players in the WNBA received an average annual pay of ******* U.S. dollars in the 2025 season, with the highest-earning players in the WNBA receiving around ******* U.S. dollars annually.

This is the complete list of NBA Player stats and salaries span from 2010 (2009-2010 season) to 2025 (2024-2025 season). Full scrapping script can be found from my GitHub Repository.

Thanks to HoopsHype and Basketball-Reference for solid data!

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is one of the most popular and widely watched sports leagues in the world, with millions of fans tuning in to watch their favorite teams and players compete on the court. This dataset provides a detailed breakdown of the salaries earned by NBA players based on their individual attributes and career trajectory.

The dataset includes information on a variety of player attributes, including age, height, weight, position, and years of experience. It also includes data on each player's career statistics, such as points per game, rebounds per game, and assists per game, among others.

By analyzing this data, fans and analysts can gain insights into how different attributes and career milestones impact NBA player salaries. They can also identify trends and patterns that might inform player evaluations and team-building strategies.

Overall, this dataset is a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding the complex factors that drive NBA player salaries and the intricate workings of the league's salary cap system. It offers a comprehensive view of the NBA landscape and sheds light on the factors that contribute to the success and earning potential of individual players.

The NBA and WNBA are the two top leagues for basketball in the United States for men and women, respectively. In the NBA in 2024, players were paid around 50 percent of the league revenue. In comparison, players in the WNBA took home around 10 percent of the revenue generated in the league.

In the 2024/25 season, the average player expenses for franchises in the National Basketball Association peaked at an estimated ***** million U.S. dollars. This denoted an increase of roughly two percent from the previous season, when the figure stood at ****** million U.S. dollars.

NBA Player Statistics Dataset (Regular Season & Playoffs)

Overview

This dataset contains detailed NBA player statistics for both the regular season and playoffs, including per-game performance metrics and advanced analytics such as Player Efficiency Rating (PER). The dataset is useful for basketball analytics, machine learning projects, and statistical research on player performance.

Dataset Features

• Basic Information

  • Player: Name of the player
  • Age: Player's age in the season
  • Team: Team abbreviation
  • Pos: Position played (e.g., PG, SG, SF, PF, C)
  • Season Type: Indicates whether stats are from Regular Season or Playoffs

• Per-Game Statistics

  • G: Games played
  • GS: Games started
  • MP: Minutes played per game
  • FG, FGA, FG%: Field goals made, attempted, and percentage
  • 3P, 3PA, 3P%: Three-pointers made, attempted, and percentage
  • 2P, 2PA, 2P%: Two-pointers made, attempted, and percentage
  • FT, FTA, FT%: Free throws made, attempted, and percentage
  • ORB, DRB, TRB: Offensive, defensive, and total rebounds per game
  • AST: Assists per game
  • STL: Steals per game
  • BLK: Blocks per game
  • TOV: Turnovers per game
  • PF: Personal fouls per game
  • PTS: Points per game

• Advanced Metrics

  • PER: Player Efficiency Rating, a metric that measures per-minute performance while adjusting for pace

Usage

This dataset is ideal for:
✅ Basketball analytics (player comparisons, efficiency analysis)
✅ Machine learning projects (predicting player performance, clustering player roles)
✅ Data visualization (trends in player stats, team comparisons)

Basketball is a commonly watched sport both in the United States and worldwide. The National Basketball Association is a professional basketball league for men with 30 teams competing against each other in the United States. Over the past years, NBA has gained significant popularity and a significant increase in players' salaries has made it one of the best paid sports league worldwide. In 2019, the NBA's average annual salary reached 8.32 million U.S. dollars per player and total salaries approximated to 3.67 billion U.S. dollars.

A January 2025 survey in the United States revealed that **** percent of NBA fans who attended or watched games had a household income between ****** and ****** U.S. dollars. Meanwhile, ** percent of fans' income was below ****** U.S. dollars.

The "NBA Player Salaries 2023-2025" dataset is a treasure trove of financial insights in the basketball world. It features detailed records of player earnings for each season, from 2023 📅 to 2025 📅. With this dataset, you can explore the dynamic landscape of NBA salaries, track player paydays, and decipher the evolving financial fortunes of 🏀 superstars. Dive into the data and uncover the 💲 trends that shape the game, from record-breaking contracts to surprising salary shifts. 📈💰

Dataset

This dataset was created by Josh Strupp

Contents

In 2024/25, the Golden State Warriors generated the most revenue from the National Basketball Association franchises. Specifically, the Golden State Warriors generated 880 million U.S. dollars in revenue by the end of the season.

Context

• The National Basketball Association (NBA) is an American men's professional basketball league.
• It is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the four major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada.
• It is the premier men's professional basketball league in the world.
• The league was founded in New York City on June 6, 1946, as the Basketball Association of America (BAA).
• It changed its name to the National Basketball Association on August 3, 1949, after merging with the competing National Basketball League (NBL).
• The NBA's regular season runs from October to April, with each team playing 82 games.

• The league's playoff tournament extends into June. As of 2020, NBA players are the world's best paid athletes by average annual salary per player.

• The NBA is an active member of USA Basketball (USAB), which is recognized by the FIBA (International Basketball Federation) as the national governing body for basketball in the United States.

• The league's several international as well as individual team offices are directed out of its head offices in Midtown Manhattan, while its NBA Entertainment and NBA TV studios are directed out of offices located in Secaucus, New Jersey.

The NBA is the third wealthiest professional sport league after the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB) by revenue.

Content

1. GM, GP; GS: games played; games started 2.PTS: points 3.FGM, FGA, FG%: field goals made, attempted and percentage 4.FTM, FTA, FT%: free throws made, attempted and percentage 5.3FGM, 3FGA, 3FG%: three-point field goals made, attempted and percentage 6.REB, OREB, DREB: rebounds, offensive rebounds, defensive rebounds 7.AST: assists 8.STL: steals 9.BLK: blocks 10.TO: turnovers 11.EFF: efficiency: NBA's efficiency rating: (PTS + REB + AST + STL + BLK − ((FGA − FGM) + (FTA − FTM) + TO)) 12.PF: personal fouls 13.MIN: minutes 14.AST/TO: assist to turnover ratio 15.PER: Player Efficiency Rating: John Hollinger's Player Efficiency Rating 16.PIR: Performance Index Rating: Euro league's and Euro cup's Performance Index Rating: (Points + Rebounds + Assists + 17.Steals + Blocks + Fouls Drawn) − (Missed Field Goals + Missed Free Throws + Turnovers + Shots Rejected + Fouls Committed)

Inspiration

This is one of the most common questions of everyone's life that how are these basketball players such rich and how are they getting paid, and even the stats about how everything is done on a team.

Stephen Curry was the top-earning player in the National Basketball Association (NBA) between October 2024 and 2025, with on-court earnings of 59.6 million U.S. dollars and endorsements worth 100 million U.S. dollars. Trailing the legendary point guard was another basketball icon, LeBron James, with total earnings of 137.6 million U.S. dollars. NBA revenue streams Players in the NBA have two main sources of revenue: salaries from the team, and endorsements from companies and brands. NBA players not only have deals with sports brands such as Nike and Adidas, but also with consumer products such as Coca-Cola, Panini, Kia Motors, and Red Bull, to name a few. Shoe deals are particularly profitable for NBA players. Michael Jordan, for example, still profits from endorsements, as his signature Air Jordan shoes have a large share of the basketball shoe market. King James reigns supreme Although Steph Curry earned more in 2024/25, LeBron James remained the NBA player with the highest cumulative career earnings as of November 2025, with over 580 million U.S. dollars in on-court earnings. As a four-time MVP winner and the NBA's all-time highest scorer, James' earnings have certainly been backed up by his on-court performances.

Economic theory suggests that both athletes and team managers should trade off the security of a longer contract and annual salary when negotiating contracts. However, previous research on sports contract structure has established that in practice, there is generally a positive relationship between length and salary, even when controlling for performance variables. Research has attempted to solve this issue using instrumental variables with limited success. We suggest the key factor of player popularity as a potential solution for the endogeneity issue, and in the absence of suitable instruments, use the nonlinear structure of NBA contract length to identify the model. Using fan All-star votes as a proxy for popularity, we find that it is positively correlated with both length and salary and that popularity shows diminishing returns to both contract length and salary as a player increases in age.

The minimum salary for players signing contracts in the 2025/26 NBA season amounted to **** million U.S. dollars. This represented an increase of around ** percent from the previous season, when the figure stood at **** million U.S. dollars.

This paper examines the impact of lagged performance on free agent contracts for players in the National Basketball Association. The main approach of the paper is twofold. The first piece investigates how past performance affects future performance in the two seasons after contract year and compares it to the impact previous performance has on contract terms for free agent players. The second piece investigates the rationality of free agent contracts in their entirety by comparing the impact of lagged performance on total accumulated production and total dollar value paid. The goal is to determine if performance prior to contract year is underweighted in contract decision-making relative to its predictive power of future performance. There is evidence that performance in years prior to contract year is overlooked in contract determination decisions by NBA general managers, and there is mild evidence that performance data two years prior to contract year are underweighted given their predictive power of future performance.

As of 2024, the largest luxury tax bill footed by a team in the NBA came in the 2023/24 season, when the Golden State Warriors were taxed 176.9 million U.S. dollars by the league. The Warriors also held the other top-three spots, bringing their overall luxury tax payments from 2021/22 to 2023/24 to 510.9 million U.S. dollars.

Context

Forbes is not just one of the most popular business magazines!! It contains countless articles on numerous subjects (e.g., business, investing, technology, entrepreneurship, etc.), reporting valuable data and insights.

For instance, Forbes publishes annual lists of wealthy people reporting their worth such as "Forbes 400" and "Forbes World's Billionaires list".

Athletes are not an exception, and every year lists are published for the top highest paid individuals.

Content

The data are scrapped manually from Forbes articles listing the top 10 highest-paid athletes in tennis, NBA, and soccer.

Athletes can have multiple sources of income. • Team sports athletes earn a salary paid by their team whereas individual sports athletes compete in tournaments for prize money (such as tennis players). • Most of the time, brands are paying athletes to promote their products (on and off the court) as a marketing promotional strategy to reach a wider target audience and boost their sales / profit.

The dataset contains 11 years of data starting from 2011.

Source

Forbes official website: https://www.forbes.com/ (dataset last updated on 3rd of January 2022)

Inspiration

• Which sport rewarded its athletes the most in each year? • Is there a trend across years for the total earnings of the top 10 highest-paid athletes of each sport? • Does this trend change when looking into salaries (or prize money) and endorsements separately? • Which country 'earns' the most out of those three sports each year?

These are examples of interesting questions that could be answered by analysing this dataset.

If you are interested, please have a look at the Tableau dashboard that I have created to help answer the above questions, and report some of my insights. Tableau dashboard: https://public.tableau.com/views/AthelesSaleries/SportsEarningsAnalysis?:language=en-US&publish=yes&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link