I thought this was a very interesting article from SI that i wanted to share with everyone.

Top 50 American Athletes Earning Salary + Endorsements

Golfers on the list.....

#1 Tiger Woods Total winnings and endorsements - $127,902,706

#2 Phil Mickelson Total winnings and endorsements - $62,372,685

#49 Jim Furyk Total winnings and endorsements - $15,754,046

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/more/spec...2008/index.html

For non-golf I'd have to imagine Micheal Jordan would be second. Of active sports players, non-golf, I'd guess Peyton Manning or ARod.

Yep, I saw this too and at first was a little surprised and then when I got to thinking about it, Phil has sponsors out his a$$ and seems to be in MORE commercials than Tiger lately! I wonder if you took Tiger's Nike contract out how close they would be? Wonder what Phil's Callaway contract is for?

you can also click to see Tiger and Phil's individual sponsors

Ok, I retract my statement earlier about Phil having more sponsors (not money just number of sponsors), but it does seem like I see him in every freaking commercial here lately. Now he is going to be on Entourage as well. That is a pretty cool gig there!!

Good god that is a high number. That kind of earning power is too much to comprehend. He has got to be the highest paid individual in the world. I know there are wealthier people who make tons of money off capital and what have you, but who else in the world gets paid so much for their individual talent? I really wonder what Tiger is doing with all this money though I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up giving most of it away, that seems like what any normal person would do.

Wow, the crazy thing is that Tiger and Phil are each up over 20 mill from last year!

golfers have way more endorsement potential over other athletes b/c of the equipment and clothing. it's almost like nascar where they can have multiple logos on their shirts/hats/ etc. and they also get separate endorsement deal for shoes/balls/driver/irons/wedges.....all separately in some cases. good for golf. and good for golfers. at least they don't have fat guaranteed contracts. so yeah, not surprised to see alot of golfers w/ high endorsement income. also, another thing to consider is that golfers have the desired demographics as far as marketing is concerned. golfers/golf fans tend to me a little older w/ more income. that's why companies spend more money to endorse golfers.

Lebron is 3rd and the list in question does incl. all active professional athletes golf and other. Funny to see Shaq still way up there considering he's pretty much a non-factor these days.

wow, anyone else think NBA players make way to much money.

huh? Which person gave away that much money? Have you seen Tiger's houseS, his boat, his plane, etc, etc. He definitely finds things to do w/ his money. Plus, he probably has ALOT sitting in a bank collecting dust somewhere. I always wonder about people like Tiger and Bill Gates. Do they have like $10mil in their checking account? That is really not that much to them. Wouldn't be fun to swipe your debit card at a Ferrari dealership?



Right on about demo. Tiger and Phil can get endorsements from Buick, KPMG and Barclays because of the people who tend to watch golf. I really couldn't see Allen Iverson in a commercial for an investment firm.

How did Jim Furyk end up on there? You would think Camilo Villegas or Adam Scott. Maybe even Zack Johnson.

How is LeBron doing better than Kobe?

Kobe had some issues a while ago.

Hilarious that the text blurb on Kevin Durant (#13 overall, with $4.3M salary) says he'll have to wait for 3 more years before he can get a "giant" contract! I wish my employer had such a restrictive collective bargainiong agreement.

It's also interesting to look at the balance between earnings and endorsements. Jim Furyk is on the list with endorsements that are almost 3 times his winnings (and Tiger is about 5 times), but there are several NFL players and Baseball players who are in the $16-20M salary range (and for the football players, that's over $1M per game), who make less than $250K in endorsements. And the golfer can have a 50 year career.

Wow, there's a lot of money in basketball! I thought American Football and Baseball were more popular with you guys but I'm beginning to think again based on some of those figures.

Speaking as someone outside of the U.S, there's an obvious reason why Tiger and Phil are ahead of the rest. I've heard of them! If someone coughs up the money to endorse Tiger or Phil, they're getting a Worldwide audience. As someone above also correctly pointed out, the golf consumer is generally one with disposable income.

Nike took a big risk with Tiger. I believe his first contract was worth $40 million. That's a lot of money to shell out on someone who hadn't yet achieved anything in the professional game regardless of how good their amateur career was. Boy has it paid off for them. Remember, they took a similar risk with Michelle Wie a few years ago and look what's happened there.

I'd be quite interested to see the turnover of the big OEM's (specifically Nike Golf and Callaway) because that money's got to come back from somewhere. Consumers must be paying an absolute fortune for equipment and balls. I'm in the wrong industry!

i for one am not surprised at the list.

of course the two best golfers in the world are the top two, they win the most and have the most sponsers.

as for basketball players, there money is all guaranteed and spread evenly so you'll find guys like shaq who are now role players at best still making 22 mil a year, while football players get a majority of there money up front in signing bonuses. thats why the football players on this list are the ones like big ben and jamarcus russell who just inked huge deals with big bonuses for this year.

One reason the numbers are inflated for basketball is the small number of players per team. The Lakers only have to pay 12 players; the Cowboys have to pay about 60. Even lower-tier basketball players make serious cash.

Still a staggering amount of money for any one person to earn. Mind you the sponsors must see a return or they wouldn't pay it.

Given the amounts involved it makes me wonder what the gear/clothing/whatever would cost if they didn't have to recoup these sponsorship costs? Maybe we would all have a bit more disposable cash then.

Endorsements = EASY MONEY!!

Damn what I could buy with just the interest of those earnings -if you can call it earnings!

Tiger had been neck and neck with Ferrari driver and 7 time Formula 1 champion Michael Schumacher who retired in 2006. I think #2 in the world may be a soccer/footbal player or Finn Kimi Raikkonen who was last year's F1 champ at Ferrrari. Kimi is probably paid about $50 million U.S. plus endorsements.

Nike is a HUGE company with $17 billion in sales and over $1 billion in net income. Golf clubs and balls are probably at break even. What they really care about are the shoes and clothes which are high profit. Nike wanst to sell you shoes and clothes for just about every sport. I think they do not make fireproof race drive shoes which I think Puma is in. Just about every other sport is covered.

Ditto Taylor Made (Adidas). Cally is a much smaller company than Nike ad are trying to expand into other clothing and products.

I remember, years ago when Michael Jordan was a young Pro,
a reporter asked Phil Knight, head of Nike, how he could justify
giving MJ a seemingly absurd multi-million dollar contract. He
replied, well we are still a relatively young Company and can't at this
time pay him what he's really worth.

Do other golfer make much money with endorsements?