Afrobeats singer Daniel Benson, known as BNXN, has weighed in on how Nigerian musicians’ wealth compares to that of NBA players, saying the gap is significant based on his own friendships within the league.
Speaking during a recent livestream, BNXN said his relationships with several NBA players have given him a close-up view of just how much money top basketballers command, and that Nigerian artists don’t come close by comparison. “I am friends with a few NBA players. These guys have so much money. Nigerian artists don’t even have as much money as them. NBA players are insanely rich. A player of Jaylen Brown’s calibre have so much money. Afrobeats are not close to athletes in terms of earnings,” he said.
His comment touches on a comparison that comes up periodically in conversations about global entertainment wealth. NBA contracts are negotiated within a league structure built around massive broadcasting rights deals, guaranteed salaries and endorsement packages that can run into tens of millions of dollars annually for a single star player, income that is largely fixed and predictable once a contract is signed. Music, by contrast, tends to generate revenue through a more fragmented mix of streaming royalties, live performances, brand deals and other income streams that vary considerably depending on an artist’s reach, catalogue size and market.
That structural difference becomes especially pronounced when comparing an athlete in one of the world’s wealthiest sports leagues to artists operating primarily within Afrobeats, a genre that has grown rapidly in global reach over the past decade but still generates a fraction of the revenue seen in American professional sports or in the biggest global pop and hip-hop markets. Streaming payouts per play remain relatively low industry-wide, meaning even artists with substantial streaming numbers often see smaller returns than the raw popularity might suggest, and touring economics in Nigeria and much of Africa differ significantly from the arena and stadium circuits that top global acts rely on for a large share of their income.
BNXN’s comment arrives at a moment when Afrobeats has been increasingly discussed as a genre on the rise internationally, with several Nigerian acts securing major label deals, global tours and high-profile collaborations in recent years. Even so, his remarks suggest that despite that growth, the earning ceiling for Nigerian musicians remains well below that of top-tier American athletes, a gap he frames as evident from his own personal exposure to NBA-level wealth through friendships in the league.
