Michael Jordan is and will probably always be the best basketball player to ever walk this earth. His career highlights include winning the N.B.A. championship a total of six times, Most Valuable Player five times, a fourteen time N.B.A. Allstar, and the list goes on. Whatever you can think of in the game of basketball and its history, Michael Jordan has accomplished that feat and probably more.
In the history of any sport, when a player becomes good enough and fairly unbeatable but also well known, companies throw endorsement deals at them. Most of the highest paid endorsements are paid in the Nascar industry, but there are comparable endorsements in just about any other sport depending on what a player makes of him or herself and career.
According to www.celebritynetworth.com, Michael Jordan’s net worth is currently estimated to be somewhere in the ballpark of five hundred million dollars, which I honestly thought to be a little bit low. When Jordan first started out playing basketball professionally in 1984 for the Chicago Bulls, he was paid a salary of five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. In his last season he played for the Bulls in 1997, he was paid a hefty salary set at thirty three million, one hundred and forty thousand dollars. Michael’s career earnings from basketball alone total to a record high for his era of ninety three million, seven hundred and seventy two thousand, five hundred dollars. So the question is proposed, where has the other four hundred million dollars that Jordan earned over the years come from? Endorsements are the answer.
According to http://www.powerbasketball.com/soleinfluence.html, his endorsements include “…$16 million from Nike, $5 million from Gatorade, $5 million from Bijan Cologne, $4 million from MCI, $2 million from Ray-O-vac, $2 million from Hanes, $2 million from Ball Park Franks, $2 million from Wheaties, $2 million from Wilson, $2 million from Oakley, $1 million from AMF Bowling, $1 million from CBS Sportsline, and $1 million from Chicagoland Chevrolet.” This was when Jordan was earning the absolute most from his endorsements when he was still actively and professionally playing basketball.
Currently, you will see Michael on a Hanes commercial every once in a while as he still plays an active role as a spokesperson in the company. But since he has retired, his endorsement deals have thinned out. After all, he has his own shoe company called Jordan which earns him millions per year while he just sits back and cleans his trophies.
Michael Jordan is an outlier in the world of sports. He is like the Tiger Woods of golfing. He did not just play basketball well, but he brought a legend to the sport and also gave basketball an unforgettable essence and improvement because he accomplished feats thought to be merely impossible by any sane human being. Even when Jordan passes away some day, he will always be remembered throughout the world whether it be because of his endorsements, the legend he molded, or through his shoes that will live on.
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