Sports Championships Where the Loser Makes Pretty Good Money

No one likes to lose. How many times have you heard the phrase, “The ring’s the thing,” when talking about motivation in sports?

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And as the late, great NASCAR racer Dale Earnhardt once said, “Second place is just first loser.”

However, a runner-up finish can still be quite profitable. GOBankingRates compiled the sports championships where the losers make the most money, and it’s clear that international soccer treats its second-place finishers the best.

Read on to see how these different sports rank in paying second place.

• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2020
• First-place winner: Takuma Sato
• Winner prize money: $1.37 million
• Runner-up: Scott Dixon
• Runner-up prize money: $500,000

With no fans allowed to attend the race in 2020, the overall race purse was cut in half, from $15 million to $7.5 million.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2020
• First-place winner: Authentic
• Winner prize money: $1.86 million
• Runner-up: Tiz the Law
• Runner-up prize money: $600,000

The Derby has the biggest payout of the three Triple Crown races with a purse of $3 million total. The Preakness pays out $1.5 million total, and the Belmont Stakes purse is $1 million.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2020
• First-place winner: Dustin Johnson
• Winner prize money: $2.07 million
• Runner-up: Cameron Smith, Sungjae Im
• Runner-up prize money: $1.24 million

Among the men’s four major golf tournaments, The Masters’ total purse of $11.5 million ranks second behind the U.S. Open’s of $12.5 million.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2020
• First-place winner: Bryson DeChambeau
• Winner prize money: $2.25 million
• Runner-up: Matthew Wold
• Runner-up prize money: $1.35 million

The top five finishers split $5.5 million of the overall $12.5 million purse.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2020
• First-place winners: Dominic Thiem (men’s); Naomi Osaka (women’s)
• Winner prize money: $3 million
• Runner-up: Alexander Zvereve (men’s); Victoria Azarenka (women’s)
• Runner-up prize money: $1.5 million

Prize money dropped for the 2020 U.S. Open, from $57 million to $53.4 million. The runners-up’s shares dropped $400,000 to $1.5 million.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2020
• First-place winner: Denny Hamlin
• Winner prize money: $2.06 million
• Runner-up: Ryan Blaney
• Runner-up prize money: $1.51 million

The overall $23.6 million purse was the highest in U.S. motorsports history, NASCAR announced.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2019
• First-place winner: Novak Djokovic (men’s); Simona Halep (women’s)
• Winner prize money: $3.27 million
• Runner-up: Roger Federer (men’s); Serena Williams (women’s)
• Runner-up prize money: $1.63 million

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Wimbledon tournament was canceled. Wimbledon has paid the men’s and women’s winners the same amount since 2007 when it became the last Grand Slam tournament to offer the same amounts.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2019
• First-place winner: England
• Winner prize money: $4 million
• Runner-up: New Zealand
• Runner-up prize money (in millions): $2 million

The prize money for the winners was the highest in the history of the 10-team tournament.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2019
• First-place winner: Toronto Raptors
• Winner prize money: $3.54 million
• Runner-up: Golden State Warriors
• Runner-up prize money: $2.35 million

The NBA creates a “player pool” that splits money among every team in the postseason. CNBC estimated that each Raptors player earned about $240,000.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2019
• First-place winner: USA
• Winner prize money: $4.9 million
• Runner-up: Netherlands
• Runner-up prize money: $2.60 million

The Women’s World Cup winners pocket a nice check, but that total is only 7.5% of what the men’s World Cup pays out.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2019
• First-place winner: St. Louis Blues
• Winner prize money: $4.9 million
• Runner-up: Boston Bruins
• Runner-up prize money: $3 million

The NHL doubled its overall playoff bonus pool from $16 to $32 million in 2020, meaning that players on the winning Stanley Cup teams earned $240,000 each.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2021
• First-place winner: Tampa Bay Buccaneers
• Winner prize money: $6.89 million
• Runner-up: Kansas City Chiefs
• Runner-up prize money: $3.45 million

Each player on the Chiefs received $62,000 for reaching the Super Bowl.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2019
• First-place winner: OG
• Winner prize money: $15.62 million
• Runner-up: Team Liquid
• Runner-up prize money: $4.46 million

The International 2020’s prize pool of $34 million was the largest in eSports history.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2019
• First-place winner: Hossein Ensan
• Winner prize money: $10 million
• Runner-up: Sario Sammartino
• Runner-up prize money: $6 million

Ensan, the overall winner, also received custom diamond-encrusted bracelet.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2020
• First-place winner: Bayern Munich
• Winner prize money: $22.5 million
• Runner-up: Paris Saint-Germain
• Runner-up prize money: $18 million

The Champions League pays out a staggering $354 million to the 32 contending teams. If a club were to win every game it played, it could pocket $98 million.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2020
• First-place winner: Los Angeles Dodgers
• Winner prize money: $35 million
• Runner-up: Tampa Bay Rays
• Runner-up prize money: $24 million

Each player on the Rays receives roughly $249,000 for their runner-up finish.

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• Year of most recent prize estimate: 2018
• First-place winner: France
• Winner prize money: $38 million
• Runner-up: Croatia
• Runner-up prize money: $28 million

The men’s World Cup is the pinnacle of sports event payouts, with the runner-up making as much as the winners in nearly every other sport on this list.

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Methodology: To find the sports championships where the losers make the most money, GOBankingRates first referenced Stacker’s ranking of the same name and Bleacher Report’s “10 Places to Win the Biggest Paydays in Sports” for inspiration. Then, GOBankingRates used league sites and contemporary news coverage to find the tournament year of the most recent available prize purse estimate, the name of the tournament winner, the first place prize amount, the name of the runner-up and the second-place prize amount for each tournament. Estimates are only for the tournament, not the cumulative postseason. Sources are linked in the table to the left. All data was collected on and up to date as of March 16, 2021.