Major League Baseball had a staggering run this year when, over a four-week period, a quartet of its biggest stars—Nolan Arenado, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado and Mike Trout—signed blockbuster, long-term deals&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/04/01/baseballs-highest-paid-players-2019-mike-trout-leads-with-39-million/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">worth a combined $1.3 billion</a>. They ranked as four of the biggest playing contracts in the history of sports.



The deals will create generational wealth for their families, but only Trout, ranked 17th with $50.6 million, cracks the top 20 of the&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/athletes/" target="_blank">world’s highest-paid athletes</a>. 



The difference: Those four baseball stars generate barely $10 million in combined endorsement income while the top earners in basketball, soccer, tennis and golf all individually bank at least $30 million from sponsors annually; eight of the 11 best-paid athletes come from those four sports.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Lionel Messi Claims Top Spot on Forbes’ 2019 List Of The World’s 100 Highest-Paid Athletes (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/sport/2019/06/11/lionel-messi-claims-top-spot-on-forbes-2019-list-of-the-worlds-100-highest-paid-athletes/" target="_blank">Lionel Messi Claims Top Spot on Forbes’ 2019 List Of The World’s 100 Highest-Paid Athletes</a>



Most of the athletes ranked above Trout follow a similar path: Reach the highest levels of a global sport, and marketers swarm with endorsement deals to pitch their wares around the world.



 Barcelona soccer legend Lionel Messi leads the way on this year&#8217;s list with $127 million, including $35 million off the pitch from partners Adidas, MasterCard, PepsiCo and more. Messi translates into every language.



Messi is only the fourth athlete to land in the No. 1 spot over the past 19 years, joining Tiger Woods (12 times), Floyd Mayweather (4) and Cristiano Ronaldo (2). 



Messi succeeds Mayweather, who failed to get in the ring for a pro bout over the past 12 months but is likely still counting last year&#8217;s&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2018/06/13/full-list-the-worlds-highest-paid-athletes-2018/" target="_blank">$285 million haul</a>, which he earned largely from his 2017 bout against UFC star Conor McGregor.



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<h4 class="wp-block-heading">READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The World's Highest-Paid Athletes (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbes.com/athletes/#447d3f055ae5" target="_blank">The World&#8217;s Highest-Paid Athletes</a></h4>



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Messi is joined by fellow global soccer icons Cristiano Ronaldo ($109 million) and Neymar ($105 million) at the top this year. It is the first time that soccer players have ranked as the top three earners in sports since Forbes began tracking athlete earnings in 1990.



Elite stars in other global sports are also extremely marketable on any continent. Roger Federer ranks fifth with $93.4 million, including $86 million off the court. 



Federer will turn 38 in August and is a dinosaur in tennis years. Yet Japanese apparel brand Uniqlo signed the 20-time Grand Slam winner in 2018 to a&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2018/07/02/roger-federers-uniqlo-deal-pushes-his-endorsement-earnings-to-the-worlds-highest/" target="_blank">10-year contract worth $300 million</a>. Federer has a dozen sponsors looking to tap the cash-rich tennis fan demographic.



Basketball&#8217;s leading trio of LeBron James ($89 million), Stephen Curry ($79.8 million) and Kevin Durant ($65.4 million) rank seventh through ninth, having earned a combined $130 million beyond their respective playing salaries. 



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The NBA’s Highest-Paid Players 2019: LeBron James Leads With $89 Million (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/lists/2019/02/13/the-nbas-highest-paid-players-2019-lebron-james-leads-with-89-million/" target="_blank">The NBA’s Highest-Paid Players 2019: LeBron James Leads With $89 Million</a>



Their shoe deals, with Nike (James, Durant) and Under Armour (Curry), are by far the biggest endorsement for each player and dwarf what an MLB player can earn pitching baseball cleats and gear.



Sportswear brands, including Adidas, have used NBA stars in China for more than a decade to help establish a foothold in the world&#8217;s biggest market, sending big names like James and Durant there every summer on promotional tours. The NBA estimates&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/shlomosprung/2019/03/04/nba-china-ceo-derek-chang-takes-us-inside-nbas-push-to-make-basketball-worlds-most-popular-sport/#63a2ef0151b0" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">640 million people</a>&nbsp;in China watched some kind of NBA programming during the 2017-18 season—that&#8217;s nearly twice the population of the U.S.



Golf is another sport that reaches almost every corner of the globe, and no golfer has benefited more than Tiger Woods: He has made $1.4 billion during his career from endorsements and appearance fees, more than 10 times his prize money, and his net worth is a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2018/12/18/tiger-woods-net-worth-800-million-in-2018/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">staggering $800 million</a>. Woods ranks 11th on this year&#8217;s athletes list with earnings of $63.9 million, including $54 million off the course.



Tiger roared back over the past 12 months with his first win in five years (Tour Championship) and his first major title in 11 years (The Masters). Last year, he signed an exclusive multi-year global content partnership with Discovery&#8217;s GolfTV. Head-to-head matches are part of the deal, and most will take place outside the U.S.



The 100 highest-paid athletes earned a combined $4 billion over the past 12 months, up 5% over the previous year. The increase jumps to 16% if you strip out the one-time stimulus of the 2017 Mayweather-McGregor fight. Endorsements fueled much of the gains, with sponsor-driven income at $987 million, up 12% from the previous year.



Overall, athletes from 10 sports and 25 countries made the top 100. Basketball (35 athletes) is the most dominant sport, and Americans (62) are the most dominant nationality.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Inside Serena Williams’ Plan To Ace Venture Investing (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/06/05/inside-serena-williams-plan-to-ace-venture-investing/" target="_blank">Inside Serena Williams’ Plan To Ace Venture Investing</a>



Tennis ace Serena Williams ranked 63rd with $29.2 million, including $25 million off the court. She is the only woman to crack the top 100 for the second time in three years.&nbsp;



<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2018/06/07/why-no-women-ranked-among-the-worlds-100-highest-paid-athletes/" target="_blank">No female athletes qualified last year</a>, when Williams was just returning to tennis after a 12-month layoff for her pregnancy and the birth of her daughter, Olympia. Williams is lining up her next act with a new clothing line and&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/06/03/inside-serena-williams-plan-to-ace-venture-investing/" target="_blank">a venture capital fund</a>focused on investing in female and minority founders.



Our earnings include prize money, salaries and bonuses earned between June 1, 2018, and June 1, 2019. Endorsement incomes are an estimate of sponsorships, appearance fees and licensing incomes for the same 12-month period (click&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/06/11/behind-the-numbers-of-the-top-earning-athletes-2019/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>&nbsp;for a more detailed methodology and the numbers behind the top 100).



-Kurt Badenhausen; Forbes Staff

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World’s Highest-Paid Athletes 2019: What Messi, LeBron And Tiger Make

The showdown between the biggest stars in boxing and UFC is less than a month away and tickets are still not on sale. That changes today with tickets for <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/floyd-mayweather/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Floyd Mayweather</a> versus <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/conor-mcgregor/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Conor McGregor</a> available at 1 ET at <a href="https://www1.ticketmaster.com/event/2E0052EAE9372152" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Tickmaster.com</a> or on site at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Tickets for the August 26 bout range from $500 to $10,000 with additional fees applied at checkout. Other tickets cost $1,500, $2,500, $3,500, $5,000 and $7,500. There is a limit of two tickets per household.
The arena, which opened last year, holds 20,000 for boxing. The get-in price is less expensive than the 2015 Mayweather-<a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/manny-pacquiao/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Manny Pacquiao</a> bout where the cheapest list price was $1,500 at the 16,800-seat MGM Grand Garden Arena. Only 500 tickets were released to the public in that fight with the rest doled out to promoters and others involved with the bout.
While tickets have yet to hit the market for Mayweather-McGregor, you can already bid on them on the secondary market. Ticket reseller TicketIQ has more than 400 tickets available as of Monday morning at prices <a href="https://www.tiqiq.com/fight/conor-mcgregor-tickets/conor-mcgregor-vs-floyd-mayweather-jr--08-26-2017/4035147264396?publisherid=1605756&amp;utm_campaign=maymc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">starting at $3,000</a> for nosebleed seats, and they range as high as $24,000 for ringside ones.
The Mayweather-McGregor fight promises to be one of the biggest financial bonanzas in the history of sports, on par with a Super Bowl or the Mayweather-Pacquiao bout, which <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2015/06/10/mayweather-and-pacquiao-produce-the-first-600-million-night-in-the-history-of-sports/#5ef3951e21af" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">generated $600 million</a> in revenue. The pay-per-view audience will ultimately determine how big a cash cow the night is. The fight is priced at $100 for the high-definition PPV feed ($90 in standard def) and Las Vegas is currently taking over-under bets on <a href="https://sports.bovada.lv/boxing/floyd-mayweather-conor-mcgregor/floyd-mayweather-jr-conor-mcgregor-201708262300" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">4.99 million PPV buys</a>. Mayweather-Pacquiao had 4.6 million buys.
Both fighters will make a killing on the bout. McGregor is set to earn at least $75 million, which would be five times any payday he had at UFC. Mayweather has made a career of big paydays befitting a fighter nicknamed &#8220;Money.&#8221; He earned roughly $250 million for his unanimous decision over Pacquiao. Another payout along those lines would push his <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2017/07/13/floyd-mayweather-career-earnings-could-hit-1-billion-with-mcgregor-fight/#28d319df17d2" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">career earnings to $1 billion</a>. Mayweather would be just the third athlete to earn $1 billion from his sporting career after Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods.
Mayweather was the highest-paid athlete three times over a four-year span before his &#8220;retirement&#8221; in 2015. The McGregor fight is sure to put him back on top again. &#8211; Written by Kurt Badenhausen, FORBES STAFF
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World’s Highest-Paid Athletes 2019: What Messi, LeBron And Tiger Make

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