Over the weekend, the biggest contract in the history of world sports closed – for a player you've never heard of. The happy and wealthy winner is Shohei Otani, a 29-year-old pitcher and hitter who was born in Japan and has played since 2018 for the Los Angeles Angels baseball team. Now, he'll be traded to rival Los Angeles Dodgers for an astronomical $700 million. We used Perplexity to try to understand how big this deal is.
The total amount of the contract is the highest price ever paid for any player. By comparison, Lionel Messi's contract with Barcelona was worth a total of $674 million. However, Messi's annual price was still higher – his contract was for five years, averaging $135 million per year, while Otney's contract is for ten years, which translates to "only" $70 million a year. In third place, behind Otani and Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, whose contract with Al-Nassr amounted to $536 million – albeit only two and a half years long, which puts him in first place in annual salary, with $214 million – in a draw with Karim Benzema, who signed a contract at exactly the same price with Al-Ittihad, for a total of two years and a total of $436 million, which places him fifth in the greatest deals in the history of the sport.
In fourth place is football player Patrick Mahomes, who signed a $2020 million, 450-year contract with the Kansas City Chiefs in 10; Compared to football legend Tom Brady, who earned less than half of Otney's combined career span.
Compared to other baseball players, Otney's contract is even more astounding: The second-largest contract in the sport, and sixth in all sports, is that of Mike Trout, who received $426.5 million for 12 years, or about $35.5 million a year, or about half of Otney's salary. Moreover, Major League Baseball has 8 teams whose combined player salaries for 2024 will total less than $700 million.
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