How much money do you think you’d get if you played at a major tennis championship?Wimbledon for example has seen the prize money pot go up by 12.6% since 2015 and stood overall at a £31.6 million for 2017.To put that into context, if you managed to get into the first round at SW19, your take home would be a cool £35,000 – second round £57,000 and so on and so forth.Winning the championship would earn you a huge prize of £2.2million.Not a bad payday, especially if you're one of the world’s top players.Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic has a career earnings total of $109,800,000 and eight-time Wimbledon champion Roger Federer has earned a massive $107,300,000.This year alone, the Swiss super star has netted $8,000,000. That works out as around $78,454 each time he steps onto the court. However, that is not the most a top ten tennis player earns.Djokovic earns himself $115,752 a match, Spaniard Rafa Nadal nets $82,429, Andy Murray takes home $71,942, Stan Wawrinka earns $41,531, and Milos Raonic $37,429.Japanese player Kei Nishikori is extremely popular in his homeland, so just from endorsements alone, he earned $30,000,000 in a 12 month period – more than tennis giants Nadal and Djokovic.Djokovic was the first player to ever break through $100,000,000, in spite of the fact that the Serb has won fewer titles than Swiss Roger Federer.Twitter user Enrico Maria Riva posted the full list on his Twitter feed, and it makes for interesting reading.
Massive earnings for turning up are not limited to tennis players.
A rugby player playing in the Aviva Premiership on average earns around £70,000 per year, if they are lucky enough to play for England, they take home around £15,000 per-Test on top of their club wage.
Football wages have been insane for years; it is not uncommon for a talented teenager to earn upwards of £25,000-a-week – if you're one of the top players in the world, it's more likely to be in the hundreds of thousands.
As in all things, money talks, but sometimes the amount of money in sport is insane.