Professional athletes all over the world earn a lot of money in addition to sports contracts, prizes and bonuses that they receive for their participation in various sports and non-sports competitions and advertisements.
Sources of income for these athletes include contracts they make with manufacturers dedicated to athletes or large companies and the various international brands they contract with.
The highest paid athletes in the world
Here are the top-earning athletes in the world:
Boxer Floyd Mayweather
- Activity: practicing the art of boxing.
- Revenue: $ 285 million
Floyd Mayweather has been topping the list of the world’s highest-paid athletes four times in a row.
And through his fight with boxer (Conner McGregor) he spent only 36 minutes in the ring and earned up to $ 275 million and also made $ 10 million outside of the ring.
The fight, which took place between the two biggest stars in the world of boxing as a huge sporting event, was watched by nearly 4.3 million viewers, and tickets were sold to them.
This conflict has totaled over $ 550 million in revenue from all sources.
In total, Floyd Mayweather earned three times what McGregor earned, bringing his total to $ 1 billion.
He accepted the fight against McGregor and made huge profits by signing contracts with Hublot and Tequila Avion.
His amateur teammates called him the Pretty Boy because he was out of his matches and his face was clean with little hits and this was due to the defensive ability he received from his uncle and his father.
Lionel Messi
- Activity: A football attacker with FC Barcelona, born in 1987 from Argentina.
- Revenue: $ 111 million, German website Spox estimated that Messi’s fortune was estimated at € 130 million in 2015.
Messi finished the 2017/18 season as the best player in the five European leagues and scored his record of 45 goals in all competitions.
In November 2017, Messi extended his contract with Barcelona and the player will work with the team until the 2020-2021 season.
FC Barcelona will pay Messi $ 80 million annually, making Messi the most expensive soccer player in the world.
Add this amount to Messi’s permanent contract with the sports company Adidas, and Messi also has contracts with Guitar, Pepsi, Orido, Huawei and Hawkers.
There is also an amusement park based on the Messi character (Messi Experience Park) that was scheduled to open in 2020 in Nanjing / China, but its opening was stopped due to the Corona crisis.
He was classified in 2010 by France Football newspaper as the highest paid player in the list of the richest soccer players in the world, with an estimated revenue of twenty-nine million pounds, including salaries, bonuses and profits, and this amount rose to 74 million euros in 2015.
Cristiano Ronaldo
- Activity: A football attacker and professional player of Portuguese origin, who was born in 1985 and the star of this game shone with Manchester United and then continued his brilliance with Real Madrid, and he won the FIFA World Player award as well as the FIFA Ballon d’Or and the Golden Boot. The FIFA Player of the Year award for the year 2016 for the fourth time and won several other awards.
- Revenue: $ 108 million
Ronaldo scored 44 goals in 43 games last season and won his fifth Ballon d’Or.
He also won the European Champions League for the fifth time.
His current contract with Real Madrid amounts to more than $ 50 million over three years until Ronaldo is 36 years old.
His permanent contract with Nike is worth more than a billion dollars.
Of course, Ronaldo has signed contracts with various companies including American Tourist, EA Sports and Herbalife.
Nor should the growing popularity of CR7 products be ignored, including footwear, underwear, fragrances, jeans, children’s wear, and contracted hotels and restaurants.
Additionally, Cristiano Ronaldo is the most popular athlete in the world with 322 million followers on social networks.
Real Madrid paid him a record $ 131 million in 2009 to play for the players of this club.
He has now moved to play for Juventus, where he gets approximately 596,000 euros from this club per week, and this is approximately 31 million euros a year.
Ronaldo’s fortune is estimated at approximately 361 million pounds ($ 466 million), as he is in the list of the highest-paid soccer players in the world and he is in second place after Lionel Messi, with earnings estimated in 2019 of 109 million dollars (84 million pounds).
Conner McGregor
- Activity: mixed martial arts of boxing, taekwondo, karate, kickboxing and other such arts for the lightweight and featherweight category. He is Irish, born in 1988.
- Revenue: $ 99 million
The biggest star of “Juventus” has not entered the professional competition since November 2016, but in 2017 thanks to his struggle with “Floyd Mayweather” he got a lot of money as he got 85 million dollars for his participation in the fight, which is more than five times his previous salary.
The fight was watched by 4.3 million viewers via PPV and had over $ 550 million in total revenue from that fight.
He also has a contract with Wynn Las Vegas to host post-match parties and events where McGregor’s digital products including Conor McGregor FAST, MacMoji, MacTalk and Mac Life are big profits for him.
After he signed a contract with the company that specializes in combat sports, and in 2015 specifically, his matches achieved records of sales, as the value of profits from one fight reached 134 million dollars.
As he stated, his net profit in 2016 was 40 million euros.
In 2016, he signed a contract with Reebok and Monster Energy, where he charged both companies nearly 4 million euros, making him among the most expensive athletes in the world.
Neymar
- Activity: A wing and offensive player in the ranks of (Paris Saint-Germain) French football club of Brazilian origin, born in 1992, where he is known to have high skill in addition to dribbling, speed and innovation on the field, as he has the ability to play with both feet.
- Revenue: $ 90 million
In August 2017, this Brazilian star signed a five-year contract with Paris Saint-Germain worth over $ 600 million.
Of this amount, $ 250 million was paid to his former club Barcelona to terminate his contract with the club, and the remaining $ 350 million will be paid during Neymar’s contract until June 2022.
In addition to Neymar’s income from the club he plays in, the 26-year-old has signed contracts with a number of international companies including Nike, Bull, Gillette, McDonald’s and Beats by Dre.
Neymar is the first soccer player to have his own Air Jordan sneakers.
Neymar joined French club Paris Saint-Germain on a contract that will last until 2022.
LeBron James
- Activity: A professional basketball player for (Los Angeles Lakers) as well as a player in the USA national team, LeBron James is the famous American basketball player who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers. LeBron James was born in 1984 in Ohio.
- Revenue: $ 5.85 million
He signed a contract with Nike Sneakers and renewed his contract in 2006 with the Cleveland Cavaliers with a deal worth $ 60 million.
In 2004, at the age of nineteen, he won the Best Young Player award in the National Basketball Association, and is considered in the history of basketball to be the youngest player to ever win the award.
Everyone compares him to Michael Jordan and he broke Michael Jordan’s record in the longest matches with a double-digit score and became the youngest basketball player to score more than 30,000.
With all this success he has signed valuable contracts with prestigious companies around the world including Nike, Coca-Cola, Kia Motor, Beats By Dre, Intel and Blaze Pizza.
James’ signature shoes are one of Nike’s most popular products among other players.
He has two specialist companies, one of which is SpringHill Entertainment and one media company called Uninterrupted.
LeBron James bought a small part of the famous English club (Liverpool) in 2011 after the American group Afsiji bought Liverpool Football Club, as its 2% stake in the club became more valuable day after day after the team won the European Champions League, which James bought for an amount. It is worth 4.8 million pounds, as reported by the English newspaper “The Sun”.
The newspaper also reported that the stake that James bought rose to $ 25 million.
The star of the American Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team, LeBron James, won 20 million pounds by qualifying for the English club Liverpool for the Champions League final, where this team beat the Italian team Roma 7/6 in the first-leg matches in the semi-finals of the tournament.
Lebron James is considered one of the richest-paid athletes in the world, as he is second only to soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo in the (Forbes) list of the richest athletes in 2016.
Roger Federer
- Activity: He is considered a legend in tennis. He is Swiss, born in 1981. He is considered a professional tennis player who occupies the third position in the classification of men’s tennis players.
Federer has several world records unique to it in the open era, remaining at the top of the world rankings for 310 weeks.
- Revenue: $ 77.2 million
The biggest star in tennis history added two more important awards to the list of awards he received, bringing the number of awards to 20.
In view of his charitable work as his support for charitable organizations, he established the Roger Federer Charitable Foundation with his mother, and he also helped the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in South Africa and other charitable works that made him ranked eighth in the list of the 100 most famous people around the world who were selected by Forbes magazine as of year 2013.
He has set up a foundation in his own name with a budget of $ 40 million, providing educational facilities to one million African children since the end of 2018.
In 2018 he returned to the top of the world rankings for a short period, and for more than three years his name has been included in the list of the best in the ATP or ATP list.
Federer has earned a total of $ 116 million in his gaming prize money, but his income from tennis overseas is much higher.
Mercedes-Benz and Lindt extended their contracts with Federer at the end of 2017.
In addition, he signed a $ 40 million contract with Barilla, which in recent years has joined him with the companies he has contracted with. Among the companies he has contracted with are Nike, Wilson, Credit Suisse, Mercedes, Rolex, Lindt and others.
Stephen Kerry
- Activity: He is an American basketball player and plays with the (Golden State Warriors) team in the National Basketball Association, born in 1988.
- Revenue: $ 76.9 million
Stephen Kerry twice won the MVP award and signed his first contract worth nearly $ 200 million last summer.
The contract was signed for five years with the Golden State Warriors.
Stephen Kerry’s current salary for 2018/2019 is nearly three times his salary in past seasons and topped the NBA’s list of the most expensive contracts for the first time, being ranked in the list of highest-paid players with an annual salary of $ 40 million.
Stephen Curry has a net income of $ 47.3 million and a net worth of $ 60 million.
He is considered one of the most important players who earn more than $ 40 million in a single season.
In addition to this valuable sports contract with the team he plays with, the famous player signed cooperation and sponsorship agreements with various companies including brands Vivo, Chase, Ander Armor, JBL and Brita, where the deals generate $ 42 million in foreign revenue for Stephen Kerry.
Sony-Pictures recently signed a multi-year development and production contract with him.
Keri and his partners Jeron Smith and Eric Bethon founded a new manufacturing company called Unanimous Media where the company focuses on developing and producing movies and TV projects for family, sports and the like that bring them huge profits.