Not all professional athletes make a lot of money such as those that participate in smaller non revenue producing sports. In order to be able to be a professional athlete full time, a lot of these athletes have to count on the products and money they get from their sponsors and advertisers. Other athletes, that are in the limelight however, make a lot of money playing their sport and sometimes more from their sponsorship contracts. One of the earliest athletes to really do this was professional basketball player, Michael Jordan who used his basketball skills to promote several products as well as apparel, toys, items and even basketball videos with his likeness on them.
Wherever there is room to promote a sponsor, they will find a way to do it whether it is on the helmet of a professional NASCAR racer or in the form of a body tattoo for professional beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece. Athletes are offered great package deals to endorse a particular brand as a sort of spokesperson and in exchange they receive compensated with paychecks and products. For the lesser known athletes, this is extremely helpful to provide them with the extra income they need to be able to train full time. For other highly compensated athletes like professional baseball, basketball and football players it is simply the cherry on top.
Michael Jordan was one of the first professional athletes to really be endorsed by various sponsors and he ended up making more from those endorsements than he did from shooting hoops. The inital companies saw the total star power in Michael Jordan and knew he would make the perfect marketer for their product. One example was Gatorade which was a sports drink that had been around for quite a while but when they got Michael Jordan to endorse Gatorade, sales went through the roof and it became the best selling sports drink.
Now younger professional athletes that are making it to the big leagues see product endorsements as part of the entire deal when they sign professionally. A lot of new athletes that are confident in their sport and their ability to represent a product even hold out for multi million dollars endorsement these days. One example of that younger big time player is Le Bron James. He was in the headlines for his basketball abilities saying he was the next Jordan when he was just a sophomore playing in Akron, Ohio. Now he is one the largest paid athletes with several lucrative endorsements.
The biggest grossing professional athlete to have the greatest amount of endorsement deals in history is golfer, Tiger Woods. As an individual athlete, he is not paid by salary but rather by performance and how many big golf tournaments he wins. Because he has been such a powerful and likeable force in his sport, his endorsements deals are earning him several million each year in addition to his golf earnings. He also has lost several of these sponsors with the latest scandals of his several infidelities.
