Which Commissioner Gets Paid The Most?

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It pays to be the commissioner of one of the "Big Four" sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, NFL).

What do Roger Goodell, Bud Selig, David Stern and Gary Bettman all have in common? They all receive many millions of dollars per year to act as Commissioner of their respective leagues, and they are all likely worth at least eight figures.

Two of the questions that people often ask are: who is the richest Commissioner in sports, and which Commissioner makes the most money on an annual basis?

Now, there are only a few people in the world who know the exact net worths of the individuals that I have listed above, and I'm not one of those people. However, based on public records, we can make educated guesses as to how much they are worth.

Let's first look at total net worth.

From richest to "poorest" (net worth), based on pure speculation, we have:

Bud Selig, $375 million
David Stern, $135 million
Roger Goodell, $45 million
Gary Bettman, $30 million

Bud Selig and his family sold the Milwaukee Brewers for $200 million in 2005, plus Selig rakes in many millions of dollars acting as Commissioner of Major League Baseball. His current two-year contract reportedly calls for Selig to be paid as much as $22 million per year.

In the case of Stern, Goodell and Bettman, all four made the bulk of their fortunes thanks to their Commissioner salaries. David Stern has been Commissioner of the NBA since 1984 and has likely been paid hundreds of millions of dollars during that time.

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Which Commissioner gets paid the most money on an annual basis? Let's take a look (this is based on assorted media reports):

Bud Selig, $22 million
David Stern, $20-$23 million
Roger Goodell, $10 million
Gary Bettman, $8 million

Roger Goodell recently inked a contract extension that will see him paid as much as $20 million per year (that contract extension hasn't kicked in as of yet). The NFL's owners wanted to bring their Commissioner's salary in line with that of the other major leagues.

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In short - it pays to be the Commissioner of one of North America's major sports leagues.