On Sunday, the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles will go head to head in this year’s Super Bowl. For the players, a Super Bowl run doesn’t just mean glory. It also comes with a hefty bonus check.
SB Nation crunched the numbers to determine approximately how much athletes in every sport would take home after winning their respective championship game, looking at professional football, hockey, baseball and basketball. To compile the data, SB National analyzed major American sports leagues’ collective bargaining agreements.
This Super Bowl’s champs will receive around $191,000 each for their entire playoff run. The losing side, meanwhile, will take home $135,000 apiece for their post-season play.
The majority of that sum comes from Sunday’s game. The winners will receive $112,000, while their opponents will get $56,000.
That’s a step up from last year, when every member of the winning New England Patriots took home $107,000 after the big game, even if they didn’t play a single minute. The Atlanta Falcons received $53,000 each.
However, these players would be earning much more if they excelled at a different sport: baseball.
Players on the Houston Astros who claimed a world series win in 2017 earned around $438,901.57. That’s 130 percent more than their NFL counterparts for scoring a victory at the championship game.
Basketball falls somewhere in the middle — $221,000, as estimated by SB Nation — while hockey is decidedly less at around $163,000 per player.
Although $191,000 is a sizable amount of money by normal standards, it pales in comparison to many NFL players’ salaries. Take Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints, Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Matt Ryan of the Atlanta Falcons and Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, who all earn more than $20 million per season.
There is one thing you can’t put a price on, however: a Super Bowl ring. They can be worth anywhere from $5,000 to $37,000 or more, but the prestige that comes with being the best in the league, if only for a season, is priceless.
This is an update of a previously published article.
Disclosure: NBC Sports is televising Sunday’s Super Bowl.
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