When we talk about athletes, that are some people that think they really gain a lot of money, but are going to be able to get into a specific spot, because it doesn’t matter how famous they are, they still gain salaries.

However, there are some brilliant people who gain substantially more than its payrolls due to other commercial endorsements, which put them among the richest person on the planet.

Here is a list of the top 7 athletes and former athletes and their fortunes, if they still play and where this fortune come from:

Note: this list is considering how much does these people had in net worth in January 2022.

Starting off our list is one of the greatest soccer players of all time. What puts Messi so high on this list is not only his many sponsorships, like Adidas but the fact that Messi is the highest-paid athlete in the world.

His salary nowadays is around 75 million dollars. The 7 times awarded greatest soccer player still has a lot of gas to spend on, and his fortune is most likely to keep growing in the years to come.

If you consider the fact that mister Palmer passed away in 2016 and still is on this list, this can be considered quite an achievement.

One of the greatest golf players of all time, Palmer’s won more than a billion with contracts and endorsements during his career.

But what puts Palmer high on this list was his entrepreneurial runs, mostly golf related, like designing golf courses (over 300!), but not only focused on that, owning even a Cadillac dealership in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1974.

Following Arnold Palmer is the person considered THE most successful golf player of all time: Tiger Woods.

Woods still can e seeing Golf games and it is not likely to stop so soon.

Most of his fortune comes from endorsement, especially from luxury brands like Rolex, and others like Gatorade, Gillette, and EA sports, to name a few.

The only woman on our list, and the first one to get the billion’s barrier. She is a Danish dressage rider who has gained a lot of prizes, like the silver medal in the 2017 Gothenburg European Championships in team dressage and at the 2005 Billund European Junior Championships in team dressage.

Most of its fortune comes from the family’s business: the show company ECCO, founded by her late grandfather and whom Anna owns part of it.

A former Roland Garros winner, he was one of the greatest tennis players in the 70s.

 Ion Teriac is the richest Romanian in the world. Much of its fortune comes from a lot of participation in many fields, like car sales, energy, and real estate business.

Not only that, but Mister Teriac also sponsors the MUTUA Madrid Open, one of the most important tennis tournaments in the circuit.

Our number 2 spot is the former Wrestler Vince McMahon. Vince is most famous for being the Chairman, CEO, and majority shareholder of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), a company that was founded by his father.

This ownership makes McMahon’s net worth peak at US$ 2.96 billion Dollars in April 2019, when the stocks of WWE peaked at $96. Shortly after, the stocks simply melted and McMahon’s net fluctuate around where we are now.

Our number one spot is the greatest basketball player, and as we can see, the greatest athlete regarding making his money grows and flows: Michael Jordan.

The most impressive part is that throughout his career, Jordan has gained only $ 93.7 million in salary.

So, where does this fortune come from? Well, not only Jordan still gains a lot of money annually from endorsements (Around $ 100 million annually, and $1.4 billion in total from corporate partners), we can say that Michael Jordan has a very good scent regarding good business.

Jordan’s greatest business was the buying of a minority stake in the Charlotte Bobcats NBA team.

Well, the first buyout made Jordan cash in $ 416 million, and in 2019 Michael sold a small piece of his stake to hedge fund managers Gabe Plotkin and Daniel Sundheim at a valuation of $1.5 billion.

When we talk about common sense, we can see that most of the richest people made most of their money not only for endorsement but also through a lot of good decisions and company management. That can only show us that becoming rich takes a lot of knowledge and skill, or you can lose everything overnight!