When a pro athlete is active and people genuinely care about them, it makes perfect sense they want to cash in outside of their sport. After all, if you’ve got a limited shelf life, you might as well squeeze out every possible dime. This idea has led to the proliferation of athletes as endorsers, people like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods whose likenesses are used everywhere to sell the products that pay them the most money.
The formula is simple: the products become synonymous with the players, and everyone gets really, really rich. For companies like Nike and adidas, hitching their wagons to star athletes has contributed dramatically to their dominance and indeed legitimized them to consumers worldwide. Since today is George Foreman’s birthday, in his honor we decided to take a look at the Richest Athlete Endorsement Deals of All-Time.
NOTE: We only listed deals for which we could find confirmed dollar values. Athletes such as Lance Armstrong (Nike) and many others have deals that likely exceed some of these, but those dollar amounts have never been disclosed.