All mothers insist that their children should study for a rewarding career – which hardly means a future in sport. But this is no longer the case – as it is clear that today’s top athletes are much better off than their academic counterparts. Success in sport is certainly rewarding – even when Europe and the rest of the world are still hit badly by an economic crunch.
The London Olympics created a few dollar millionaires and served as yet another occasions for the established ones to add to their impressive bank accounts and investments. Of course, the annual sports calendar is replete with a number of world-class events where athletes earn honours and lucrative contracts from organisers and well-known sponsors. Golf, tennis, Formula I racing and football offer amazing opportunities to be grasped by commercial managers and sports agents.
Bolt’s appearance money
Jamaican Usain Bolt, the fastest man on the planet, gets $250,000-$300,000 for a track appearance and his successes this year have earned him $20.3m.
The Spanish Form I driver Fernando Alonso has an annual salary of $40m besides other millions in sponsorships. Mercedes have offered Lewis Hamilton $75 million for three years. Formula I mogul Bernie Eccleston is worth £2.5bn – no wonder his 28-year-old daughter Tamara, twice a university drop-out, can afford a £1m bathtub and more than 100 pairs of shoes!
The net worth of golfer Tiger Woods is $500m, which includes a total of $96,598,542 in prize money, and Swiss tennis ace Roger Federer is worth more than $140m.
Formula I, tennis and judo offer impressive amounts of money to the famous and eventual winners, but it is baseball and basketball that have the highest prize money. NBA and MLB players earn an average of $27m a season, even if they do not win anything!
Footballers’ antics
Because of Rupert Murdoch and Jean Marie Bosman, some footballers earn more than heads of state. For example, there are 120 millionaires in Italy’s Serie A and many more players in England with salaries over £200,000 a week! One would think that they are models of exemplary behaviour, but obviously there are quite a few footballers who make headlines for the wrong reasons. They certainly don’t act as serious professionals and at times get away with murder.
Bobo Vieri, who loves his social life sprinkled with very late nights or early mornings, did not like Inter Milan spying on him during the six seasons – from 1999 and 2005 – he played for them, scoring 123 goals. He sued for damages for intrusion in his private life, the judge ruled in his favour and Inter, together with Telecom Italia, were condemned to pay him €1 million between them. Vieri is insisting that this is not enough and the case continues. Apparently Mutu, Ronaldo and Jugovic were also ‘watched’ by Telecom head of security Giuliano Tavaroli.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic prefers Paris to Milan, mainly because the sheik is giving him more millions! Meanwhile, spoilt Andrew Hall, a brilliant 18-year-old protégé of Stoke City Academy, was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering his 15-year-old girl friend. Shocking. Then there is Cristiano Ronaldo who is also moaning about his wages after learning that Leo Messi has had a renewed contract at Barca!