Roger Federer retired from tennis last year. However, millions are still streaming.
Jonas Creator goes looking for a superstar character for Sports Week.
Last week, the American business magazine Forbes published its annual ranking of the highest paid athletes. Striking was, among other things, the total amount that the top 10 in that ranking would earn in 2023: €1.01 billion, €141 million more than the previous record from 2018. Thanks to the additional millions from Saudi Arabia that went to Cristiano Ronaldo (€123 million), Lionel Messi (second, €117 million) and golfers Dustin Johnson (sixth, €97 million). The Portuguese football star was transferred last January to Al-Nasr Club in Saudi Arabia, where he receives an annual salary of 68 million euros, and Messi’s bank account is fed as an ambassador for tourism in the Kingdom, and the Americans are the two sides of the LIV golf circuit, which is funded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
The most striking name in the top ten, in ninth place with 86 million euros, is the name of Roger Federer. After all, he is the only retired athlete. After Wimbledon 2021, the Swiss only played a double match in the Laver Cup in September last year. His knees no longer allowed him to play tennis at the highest level. Federer was already one of seven active or retired athletes to have earned more than $1 billion, along with golfer Tiger Woods, boxer Floyd Mayweather, basketball players LeBron James, Phil Mickelson, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. The lion’s share of this came from sponsors, because in his career he collected only 118 million euros in prize money.
Millions more will be added in the coming years. In fact, Federer’s business empire is as impressive as his track record as a tennis player. The twenty-time Grand Slam winner has created a wide range of partnerships, including with Barilla, Mercedes-Benz, Moët et Chandon, Rolex, Wilson, Credit Suisse and Japanese retailer Uniqlo, and founded Team8 Sports and Entertainment Company, a management agency with which he organizes the Laver Cup, among other things.
But the most important thing that distinguishes him is his investment in On Holding AG, the Swiss manufacturer of sports shoes and apparel, from which he bought a 3 percent stake in 2019, for about 60 million euros. In 2021, the company goes public on the New York Stock Exchange. It is now worth more than $8 billion, four times more than it was when Federer joined. Count who won it.
