In What Ways do The Best Basketball Players Make Money
We’ve all seen the glamorous and extravagant lifestyles that the biggest stars of the NBA or other prestigious basketball leagues live. Whether it’s their flashy Instagram feed, ranging from such expenses as a new car every other day or extravagant excursions to all corners of the world by private jets – how do they accumulate the finances to fund such lifestyles? If you’ve been asking yourself that question, don’t worry, you’re not alone. That luxurious lifestyle is one we all sometimes dream of experiencing ourselves. Keep reading to find how basketball players make money.
We’ve prepared a list of the five monetary streams for you to check out to grasp the idea of how the most prominent basketball stars make their dollars. So get your pen and paper ready, and start making notes, because you might just be inspired to follow in their footsteps!
Table of Contents
Salary
It’s no surprise that an NBA salary is slightly higher than the one of the average American. We said slightly, so how much exactly? According to the statistics specializing website Statista, an average NBA salary is around 8.32 million dollars. We might just reword the term ‘slightly,’ as an American worker’s median compensation is more along the lines of $49,764 per year.
Investments
With a high salary to spend and a lot of spare money left to invest, it’s not surprising that there are even more financial advertisers lurking where there are many basketball players around. Basketball players make money and have access to well, the best possible financial advertisers on the market, and what comes with that – the unprecedented opportunity for athletes to diversify their money to the best possible investments. Skilled financial advisers can be expensive, but they’re the key to the athlete’s ability to generate even more money from the ones they already have. Having a lot to invest in is one thing, but knowing what to invest in is the key to having a striving, successful investment portfolio that will generate a high return in the long run.
Basketball players usually diversify their investment portfolio, with their money allocated into real estate, stocks, bonds, and all other sorts of investments. With their ability to dedicate a substantial amount of money into the market, they can expect higher returns, thus continuing the cycle of expanding their wealth over time.
Endorsements
One of the most significant income sources after the standard salary that basketball players make is their salary from endorsements they take part in. In fact, it’s not uncommon for athletes to make more money from endorsements, and advertising for brands, then from their standard yearly salary.
The biggest basketball stars are known to charge as much as a million dollars per sponsored Instagram post promoting a particular brand, so we can only imagine how much profit they can generate from indulging in a full-on promotional campaign for a brand.
Suppose we want to quote some numbers here to bring home the idea of how much money pro basketball players can generate from endorsements alone. In that case, a lead example is LeBron James, who stars for the LA Lakers, bringing home a salary of nearly 38 million dollars annually, and cashing in an extra of 55 million dollars from endorsements on top of that.
So next time you’re scrolling through your Instagram feed, and notice a basketball player advertising any product, think about how much they’re cashing in on one of those. All these posts add up to a collection of fancy cars and flying in private jets!
Gambling
With money to spare, basketball players are known to indulge in the risky habit of gambling. They’re not precisely gambling to make that $20 extra bucks to pay for their parking ticket, but are instead putting their money to the test, called ‘how much more can they generate from what they already have.’ Let’s face it, casino games can be fun, but they can also be very risky to our wallets. Basketball players make money from other financial sources and try to double, triple or quadruple that by playing in casinos.
Sales
From collaborations to their brands, you’ve heard of them, and most likely, you’ve seen them! Basketball players are also savvy business people – or at least they have contacts with skilled business individuals, allowing them to use their brand and image to create a product, and sell it to the market. You’ve probably purchased a product once or twice already that has come directly from the production line of your idol. Whether it’s Christiano Ronaldo’s underwear collection, or perfumes produced by your favorite singer, you might have just added an extra few dollars to their paychecks.
Basketball players are no exception, shifting their focus now more than ever to producing tangible items that their fans are willing to buy. The logic behind that is pretty simple; not everyone will get a chance to see their idol in real life, but everyone can get a ‘piece’ of them in their home! Such marketing strategies became so popular in recent years that any famous athlete nowadays has a line of their products of some sort.
Concluding
It’s no secret that basketball players make money make a lot of money generated through various income streams. The hard work that went into them striving for the positions they’re now in is paying off, with them generating even more money from the ones they have now. From lavish vacations to diamond-encrusted jewelry pieces photographed at the finest locations worldwide, it’s easy to see how all the different forms of revenue add up to account for such lifestyles.
Even if you may not be gifted with a secret talent of being great at dribbling ball, and those inches of yours don’t exactly add up to the average height of a basketball player, don’t cry yet. The majority of the income sources we have mentioned are not limited to only being made by basketball players, so maybe now’s the time to start investing slowly, or even open up a company offering unique product sales. At the end of the day, those successful players also had to start somewhere!