Tiger Woods adultery scandal paid off! Many big sponsors like AT&T, Accenture LLP, and Gatorade left him. Unfortunately, this was not yet moved him from the top of the American richest athletes list. However, he has a significant dropped income since my last post about
World's Richest Athletes.
Recently,
Sports Illustrated released a list of the 50 top-earning American athletes by salary, winnings, endorsements and appearance fees. They called their compilation list as "2010 Fortunate 50". These are the top 10 of U.S. richest athletes:
1.
Tiger Woods/golf ($20,508,163 salary/winnings; $70,000,000 endorsements,
$90,508,163 total)
2.
Phil Mickelson/golf ($9,660,757; $52,000,000;
$61,660,757)
3.
Floyd Mayweather Jr./boxing ($60,000,000; $250,000;
$60,250,000)
4.
LeBron James/NBA basketball ($15,779,912; $30,000,000;
$45,779,912)
5.
Alex Rodriguez/MLB baseball ($33,000,000; $4,000,000;
$37,000,000)
6.
Shaquille O'Neal/NBA basketball ($21,000,000; $15,000,000;
$36,000,000)
7.
Kobe Bryant/NBA basketball ($23,034,375; $10,000,000;
$33,034,375)
8.
Derek Jeter/MLB baseball ($21,000,000; $10,000,000;
$31,000,000)
9.
Peyton Menning/NFL football ($15,800,000; $15,000,000;
$30,800,000)
10.
Dwayne Wade/NBA basketball ($15,779,912; $12,000,000;
$27,779,912)
For the complete list of the fortunate 50, visit
Sports Illustrated website.
Besides American richest athletes, SI also compiled the list of 20 world's richest athletes, as follow:
1. Roger Federer (Switzerland/tennis) $61,768,110
2. Lionel Messi (Argentina/soccer) $44,000,000
3. David Beckham (England/soccer) $40,500,000
4. Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal/soccer) $40,000,000
5. Manny Pacquiao (Philipphines/boxing) $38,000,000
6. Ichiro Suzuki (Japan/baseball) $37,000,000
7. Valentino Rossi (Italy/MotoGP racing) $35,000,000
8. Yao Ming (China/basketball) $34,378,325
9. Rafael Nadal (Spain/tennis) $27,466,515
10. Lewis Hamilton (England/F1 racing) $26,700,000
For the complete list of 20 world's reichest athletes, visit Sports Illustrated website.
From the list we can take a conclusion, although two golfers were at the top of the list, actually only those two that were in the list. In America, 15 fortunate athletes came from NFL, while 16 from NBA. From the world's list, football/soccer still dominated as world's no. 1 sport with 7 players on the top rank, although a tennis player, Roger Federer, was on the top place.
Apparently, the highest salary/winning prizes in sport still held by boxing, followed by soccer and racing. But famous figures from other sports can be on top list because their endorsements/marketing were high, because they are having a high-selling personality, both in good or bad terms.
One more thing, the only woman athlete in those list is Maria Sharapova (Russia/tennis) with annual income of $19,923,619, put her in 20th rank of world's richest.