How Much Money Does The Winning Super Bowl Team Make?
We imagine that for most pro-football players, making the Super Bowl would be a dream come true, and if they're lucky enough to win the game, that might be incentive enough. In addition to bragging rights, though, players and coaching staff on the winning team also get a bling ring. That's true whether or not they played in the game or simply rooted for their teammates on the sidelines.
Per World Sports Network (WSN) in 2022, those Super Bowl rings alone were worth some $36,000. But do players and coaching staff also make extra money for playing in the game? And what about the losing team? As WSN goes on to explain, Super Bowl players and coaches do get a bonus, and that's true whether they put an "L" or a "W" in the win column. After a successful postseason run, in fact, the extra amount each player gets paid can add up to a pretty sizable amount of money.
Players get paid a bonus every step of the way in the postseason
Per WSN, not only do NFL players get a bonus when they win a Super Bowl, but both teams earn extra money for every postseason victory along the way. In 2021, before they even took the field, players for both teams had earned an additional $150,000. (Via Rookie Road, there's no NFL-wide official bonus structure built-in for coaches, but individual coaching contracts with specific teams often include one). Per AS.com, the average NFL salary was around $860,000 per year in 2022, and depending on position, pay only went up from there, regardless of the postseason outcome.
Should the team win the game, players in 2022 could count on an extra $150,000 on their paycheck for a cumulative bonus of $300,000 for their postseason success. In 2019, CNBC reported that Super Bowl winners pocketed an additional $118,000, so clearly, NFL players enjoy some financial benefits. Per Sportskeeda, the additional money made by each player on the winning Super Bowl LVII between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles was estimated to earn an extra $157,000, up slightly from 2022 earnings.
The losing Super Bowl team also makes some extra cash
As mentioned, regardless of the Super Bowl outcomes, each NFL player on both the winning and losing team accrues a bonus on their paycheck just for getting there. And should they lose the game, they get extra cash — though slightly less than the winning team's earnings. In 2022, Super Bowl losers made an additional $59,000 for making it to the big game, on top of their postseason total, according to CNBC.
As for the 2022-23 Super Bowl, each player on the losing team would reportedly make an additional $82,000, up slightly from 2022 numbers, as Athlon Sports explains. For some context, the first Super Bowl losing team (which, coincidentally, was the Chiefs) pocketed $7,500 simply for playing and losing, or around $68,000 in today's money (via DollarTimes). It's also important to note that all these dollar amounts are before taxes — which are unavoidable even for champion NFL players — and individual players may also have Super Bowl bonuses written into their team contracts, as Sportskeeda notes.