The specialized digital media Sportico has just published the list of the 50 best athletes of all time, although not in terms of awards but income: of course, personal brands and milestones usually go hand in hand with better economic compensation, so it seems fair that the first place is occupied by a living legend of basketball. Michael Jordan has earned 3.3 billion dollars – a figure that includes inflation – since 1984, the year the Chicago Bulls recruited him and he made his NBA debut.
In the US, the sports press sometimes refers to him as ‘His Airness’, a play on words between His Highness and the name Air Jordan that accompanied him since that historic dunk on February 7, 1988. Now, there is a sapphire more than setting to his crown.
The figure (3.1 billion calculated in euros) is still staggering if we do not take into account the inflation adjustment, 2.370 billion, and puts him almost a billion above second-placed golfer Tiger Woods. His symbiosis with Nike explains an unbeaten position that seems unbeatable even though he retired for good in 2003 wearing the Washington Wizards jersey. Nike, which had been billing 920 million annually, offers him a first contract of half a million dollars plus a percentage in image rights. If Jordan owes almost half of his fortune to the sports multinational, the truth is that together they raised Nike’s initial balance to the current 49,000 million with a market value of 187,000 million dollars. Gatorade, Hanes, Upper Deck and 2K Sports have also sponsored it.
He is followed on the list by a trio of golfers, whose sports career is extraordinarily long: Tiger Woods (2,300 million euros), Arnold Palmer (1,600 and already deceased) and Jack Nicolaus (1,540 million). Cristiano Ronaldo, ranked number 5, is the most profitable footballer for his own interests: Sportico calculates his accumulated income at 1,500 million euros. He is followed by LeBron James, with 1,446 million and the merit of being the active professional who is currently earning the most, almost 120 million euros in 2021, and Lionel Messi (1,400 million) in seventh place.
Among these 50 chosen only two Spaniards appear: Rafa Nadal, in 28th place with 624 million euros and Fernando Alonso, in 35th with 576.5 million. And among those 50, only one woman, the tennis player Serena Williams, in 38th place with 567 million euros. In all cases, the figures are adjusted for inflation since they began their professional career.
