According to data from Forbes magazine, the top 100 highest paid athletes in the world in 2017 combined for $3.11 billion, and only the top 3 highest paid athletes in this list, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lebron James, and Lionel Messi, accounted for almost $260 million combined.

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The following dashboards display the total pay, including both salary/winnings and endorsements, gained by the top 100 athletes in 2017. The list includes athletes from 11 different sports, and basketball players are the most prevalent in this list, with 32 basketball players, all of which play in the NBA. The athletes in this list come from 21 different countries and the U.S. is the country with most athletes in this list (63). The only female athlete in the 2017 list of highest paid athletes was Serena Williams.

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In the first dashboard, which is sorted by income gained (in millions of USD), the viewer may filter by sport, comparing the pay by athletes in different sports or within the same sport. The viewer may also choose to view the data by source of income (total pay, salary/winnings, and endorsements). Viewers may notice that the main source of income often differs according to the sport, as athletes from certain sports, such as basketball, soccer, golf, and tennis, make a significant amount of money from endorsements, whereas baseball and football players do not tend to earn as much from this source.

 

This is further evident in the scatter plot below the bar graph, which shows one individual mark per athlete, and where the color distinguishes the sport practiced by the athlete. The X-axis indicates the amount made from salaries/winnings, while the Y-axis indicates the income gained from endorsements. The scatter plot shows trend lines by sport, although in most cases the p-values are not significant (a p-value of p<=0.05 may be statistically significant). However, the scatter plot does show that athletes that practice individual sports, such as golf, track, and tennis, earn significantly much more from endorsements than from salary/winnings, which is not surprising, since these athletes do not play for professional sport teams with enormous budgets, as is the case of basketball players in the NBA, football players in the NFL, baseball players in the MLB, or soccer players in the Spanish or English leagues.