Athletes You Never Heard of Who Make Crazy Money

Image via Complex Original

Sport: Cricket
Team: Kolkata Knight Riders
Annual pay: $7.3 million

Gautam Gambhir is one of the best cricket players in the world. He won three Man of the Match awards and was the captain of the Kolkata Knight Riders. His leadership helped take them to the final which they ended up victorious in. The $2.4 million spent on bringing him to Eden Gardens turned out to be a smart move as Gambhir ended up as the tournament's second-highest run scorer. His nine endorsement deals play a big role in him cashing in on an annual basis.

Sport: Darts
Team: N/A
Annual pay: Total earnings: $7 million

It's easy to guess that an athlete who makes a living playing darts is probably not raking in cash, but you better ask Phil Taylor about that. Taylor didn't even start throwing darts until the age of 26. While having a night out with his wife Yvonne, Taylor challenged someone who had recently qualified for an event on TV to a game at a local pub and won. That started his long 25-plus year career in which he has 16 world titles.

Sport: Professional Bull Rider
Team: N/A
Annual pay: $1.35 million

Would anyone ever expect to see a professional bull rider making serious money? It's definitely a fearless profession, and the winner always has an opportunity to make some good prize money. J.B. Mauney became the first North Carolinian to win the Professional Bull Riders Built Ford Series world championship. In the World Finals, Mauney went 6-for-6 to win the championship. His winnings for the entire performance amounted to a total of $1.35 million.

Sport: Golf
Team: N/A
Annual pay: $19 million

Brandt Snedeker won the PGA Tour Championship in 2012, allowing him to clinch the FedEx Cup. And winning the FedEx Cup includes a pretty sweet $10 million bonus, which added to the total prize money which ended up amounting to $15 million. The 32-year-old Tennessee native has had his share of success recently by winning four PGA titles over the past two years, including two during the year of 2013 when he won the Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Canadian Open.

Sport: F1
Team: Red Bull
Annual pay: $18 million

The German Formula One driver has dominated his sport and has won four straight World Championships. Vettel set a record for the youngest ever to win twice and followed that up by setting records with his third and now his fourth championship. He's under contract to drive for Red Bull through 2015 after agreeing to an extension for an extra year.

Sport: Cricket
Team: Delhi Daredevils
Annual pay: $6.9 million

Virender Sehwag makes a sizable amount of money but with the way he plays, he deserves it. Sehwag holds the Indian record for highest number of Test double-hundreds, and came within seven runs of becoming the first batsman to score three triple-hundreds. Sehwag has endorsements with Fila, Hero Honda, and Royal Challenge.

Sport: Tennis
Team: N/A
Annual pay: $10.5 million

Kei Nishikori is probably one of the more interesting and undrerrated athletes in tennis. Nishikori is ranked 12th in the world and has never played in a Grand Slam final or a semifinal. $1.5 million in prize money from June 2012 to June 2013. With Uniqlo, Wilson, adidas and Tag Heuer as sponsors, Nishikori has been able to amass $9 million during the same amount of time.

Sport: Cricket
Team: Royal Challengers Bangalore
Annual pay: $7.1 million

Cricket is a big time sport and one of the top players is Virat Kohli. In October 2013, against Australia, Kohli smashed the fastest ODI century by an Indian, the seventh fastest ever. In November 2013, he became the top ranked ODI batsman for the first time. Sounds like that $7.1 million annual salary makes perfect sense.

Sport: Sailing
Team: Oracle Racing
Annual pay: $10 million

Sailing is more than a lame summer camp activity and thing that people occasionally get lost at sea doing. For Russell Coutts, it's big business. A former Olympic Gold medalist in sailing, Coutts is the CEO of his own racing team. Let his $10 million salary be a lesson: Instead of having twig fights and making scrap books at camp, implore your children to spend time some on the lake—it might make them a millionaire one day.

Sport: F1
Team: Lotus-Renault
Annual pay: $1.5 million

Historically, the French have never produced great F1 drivers. After Alain Prost's dominance in the '80s and early '90s, Jean Alesi was the next best driver to come out of France, and even then it was like, just Jean Alesi. Romain Grosjean and his $1.5 million annual salary is getting up there. He's failed to win a single race in 43 starts, but considering that the last French driver to win an F1 race was Olivier Panis in 1996, Grosjean doesn't have a load of expectations to deal with. Fellow Lotus-Renault driver Kimi Räikkönen will be departing at the end of this season, so perhaps Grosjean will see increased opportunities to win in 2014 as a potential No. 1 driver.

Sport: Golf
Team: N/A
Annual ay: $6.1 million

No, this is not Michelle Wie. Come to think about it, Yani Tseng is the anti-Wie. No hype, no pretty smile, no doughy eyes, and no $40 million Nike contract. Just lots and lots of wins. Wie might be the only female golfer that most American sports fans even know of, but Tseng is arguably the best. The world No. 1 for 109 consecutive weeks between 2011 and 2013, Tseng has 5 major championships and 26 professional wins under her belt.

Sport: Tennis
Team: N/A
Annual pay: $18.4 million

There is a women's tennis world outside of Serena Williams, you know. In 2011, Li Na became the first native Asian player to win a Grand Slam Final after bodying Francesca Schiavone out of Roland Garros. Na is currently the world No. 3, and the No. 1 ranked Chinese women's tennis player.

Sport: Figure Skating
Team: South Korea
Annual pay: $9 million

Like many average Olympic-watching Americans, the names of the Olympiad's premier athletes tend to come and go. In 2010, Kim Yuna was the Olympic champion in singles. Even if you watched her win gold, how many times have you thought about her before this moment? (Apologies if you're reading from South Korea. We know she's a Queen over there.) That hasn't stopped Yuna from cashing in on huge endorsement deals—after the 2010 Winter Olypmpics, she was the second-highest earning athlete behind Shaun White.

Sport: Moto GP
Team: Yamaha
Annual pay: $22 million

Valentino Rossi has six MotoGP World Championships on his CV (including a four-peat from 2002-2005), and nine Grand Prix World Championships. It would be fair to call him the Michael Schumacher of motorcycle racing (and for those of you who don't know who Michael Schumacher is, go listen to "Justify My Thug"). Rossi was making as much as $35 million in 2009, but at age 34, a dip in performance (he finished 6th and 7th in the final MotoGP standings the past two years) has called for a pay cut.

Sport: F1
Team: McLaren
Annual pay: $1.5 million

Sergio Perez exploded onto the F1 scene at 22 years old after taking his first podium at the 2012 Malaysian Grand Prix. His 2nd place finish caused a whirling dervish of hype, opening the door to fat new contract with legendary racing team McLaren. He's still living off of that one podium finish, as his $1.5 million salary has only returned a 12th place finish in the 2013 Driver's Championship for McLaren.

Sport: Cricket
Team: Chennai Super Kings
Annual pay: $31.5 million

So who else wakes up before dawn to catch an Indian Premier League cricket match? Kudos to the insomniacs who do-while the rest of the United States is sleeping after a day of sporting events, you're just starting yours. And how proud must you be of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. He's the highest-paid athlete in India, and actually made the TIME 100 in 2011. We would throw out a bunch of his cricketing stats to impress you, and try to somehow justify the $31.5 million he rolled in last year, but we have no idea with a "stumpling" or a "half-century" is, and neither do you. Just know this: Dhoni's so awesome at what he does that the Indian Territorial Army made him an honorary Lieutenant colonel.

Sport: Cricket
Team: Mumbai Indians
Annual pay: $18.6 million

Lieutenant colonel Mahendra Singh Dhoni? Hah, Sachin Tendulkar laughs at that. Although Dhoni significantly outearns Tendulkar on an annual basis, the latter has infinitely cooler awards and honorary titles given to him by non-cricketing organizations for his achievements. How does Group Captain of the Indian Air Force sound? Or offers for honorary doctorates from the University of Mysore and Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences? And hell, why not make him an Honorary Member of the Order of Australia aka the Illuminati Down Under? Tendulkar has only recently retired from the game, having achieved a net worth of $160 million.

Sport: Soccer
Team: Guangzhou Evergrande
Annual pay: $14 million

Darío Conca is one of those rare top-tier talents who decided to forgo the riches (although he eventually got those) and challenges of European soccer. Unless you've been ardently following the Brasileirão, Conca hasn't registered on your footy radar. In 2011, Chinese club Guangzhou Evergrande signed Conca from his Brazilian club for a then domestic record $10 million, and he was handed a 2 year, $28 million contract. At the time, Conca's annual salary was trumped only by Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, making a relatively unknown footballer the third highest-paid player in the world. He's scored 49 goals in 92 games for the club thus far, and has won two league titles.