For months, timelines have been split: football fans swear weekly wages crush anything a singer can pull in, while music ‘die hard’ fans insist one blockbuster night on tour can wipe out a month of match checks.
The truth? At the very top, both games mint monsters, just in different ways.
Start with football. Salary is the bedrock, and the elite take-home is eye-watering before taxes. Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappé is on an estimated €31.25 million a year, roughly €601k per week, on his 2025–26 deal, excluding bonuses.
In England, Erling Haaland tops the Premier League chart at around £525k per week (£27.3 million per year). Layer endorsements on top, and the totals explode.
On Forbes’ 2025 list of highest-paid athletes, Cristiano Ronaldo leads the entire sports world at $275 million (about $225 million on-field + $50 million off-field); Lionel Messi is still a nine-figure business at $135 million with a huge off-field slice.
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African stars are no small players in this arena either. Mohamed Salah’s fresh Liverpool extension reportedly keeps him near £400k per week, making him one of the highest earners in the Premier League.
Mohammed Kudus, fresh from his move to Tottenham Hotspur, is now earning in the region of £150k weekly, more than £7.8 million annually, excluding bonuses and endorsements.
Thomas Partey, before leaving Arsenal for Villarreal, was among Arsenal’s top earners at £250k per week, over £13 million per season.
These numbers underline that African players, especially those at elite European clubs, compete with the global best when it comes to guaranteed salaries.
Footballers also monetise image rights, control over their name, likeness, and signature, via club deals and third-party sponsors.
These contracts pay for ads, boot deals, and even video-game covers, and can be structured separately from salary.
The catch? European tax rates can be brutal on wages, and agent or management fees bite too, so that gleaming “per week” number isn’t pure profit.
Now the music side. The ceiling is just as high, but the paydays are lumpier and more entrepreneurial.
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour reset the industry math with over $2 billion in ticket sales, a once-in-history benchmark that dwarfs any single-season sports salary.
Analysts peg a single Eras show’s gross near $14 million, with a rough 40% margin after stadium costs, staging and the promoter’s cut, meaning multi-million net on one night when demand is sky-high.
Swift herself is now a $1.6 billion musician, built primarily on music and touring, not side businesses, underscoring how colossal the music machine can be when you own your work and can fill stadiums repeatedly.
She isn’t alone. Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” Tour grossed $407.6 million across 32 shows (the highest-grossing country tour ever per Boxscore).
That’s an average of nearly $12.7 million per night before expenses, again, single-event sums that rival months of elite football wages.
Bad Bunny hauled in $211 million touring in 2024, another reminder that the right artist, in the right window, can approach nine-figure annual hauls.
Three of Africa’s biggest musicians, Burna Boy, Davido, and Wizkid, prove the model translates globally.
Burna Boy has become a stadium act in Europe, grossing over $15 million from his 2023–24 international tours alone, with fees per headline show running well into six figures.
He even performed at England’s Women’s Euro 2025 trophy parade ceremony in London, cementing his mainstream pull.
Davido and Wizkid each command between $200k–$500k per show on international stages, with tours sometimes grossing in the tens of millions.
Streaming royalties and ambassadorial deals (from drinks, fashion, and telecom giants) add a consistent backbone to their wealth, even if the lump sums don’t come weekly like football wages.
Music also has endorsement and ambassador money, sync fees, and catalogue economics. Crucially, the very top artistes who own or control their masters leverage royalties and touring to compound wealth; that’s central to Swift’s billion-plus status.
The trade-off? Concert revenue isn’t “all theirs.” Promoters, venues, production crews, session players, dancers, managers and agents all take a slice; touring is expensive to mount and risky if demand dips. So, who’s richer, footballers or musicians? It depends on which tier you’re looking at and how the money is made.
Consistency vs. spikes
An A-tier footballer enjoys guaranteed weekly wages for years, plus bonuses and endorsements, stable, annuity-like cash flow.
Top musicians endure longer build-ups and higher risk but can print eight- or nine-figure tour years when demand hits.
For African stars, Salah’s £18 million plus annual salary offers steady dominance, while Burna Boy can match that number with a strong global tour cycle.
Off-field wages
Football’s image rights or brand deals enrich the few global faces (Ronaldo, Messi, Mbappe, Salah).
Music’s upside scales with ownership, pricing power, and global touring footprint (Swift, Beyonce, Burna Boy, Wizkid).
One-night vs one week
Indeed, most artistes cannot match an elite footballer’s weekly wage. But the top touring acts can net more in a weekend than many stars bank in a month of football.
Because stadium shows can gross eight figures per night. Davido’s estimated $600k payday from a single arena night in North America, for example, rivals what Partey used to bank in a fortnight at Arsenal.
Verdict At the absolute apex, both worlds mint fortunes. Ronaldo’s $275 million a year shows the power of guaranteed mega-wages plus global endorsements.
Swift’s $2 billion tour proves music can blow past annual sports salaries when the cultural moment catches fire.
On the African stage, Salah and Partey show how football delivers consistent mega-paychecks, while Burna Boy and Wizkid prove African music has broken into the same stratosphere, able to rival football incomes on the right tour.
For everyone else, the rank-and-file pros and mid-tier touring artistes, football usually offers steadier, higher guaranteed pay, while music is higher variance with a sky-high ceiling if you can fill stadiums and command the global stage.
FKA/EB
Meanwhile, watch the new episode of Sports Check with Ali Jarrah below:
