Hardly anyone can, in a single article, talk about Roger Federer’s legacy now that he is leaving tennis, just as the Laver Cup which is taking place this weekend is over. For titles, for Grand Slams, for history, for rivals, for elegance, for fair play and for points that will be remembered for generations, the Swiss tennis player has been one of the cornerstones of world sport. And now he has said goodbye after two seasons in which he was not able to leave injuries and discomfort behind.
24 years active and more than 1,250 matches have lifted him to the Olympus of tennis. But not only from the racket has the Helvetian born on August 8, 1981 in Basel lived and will live, who outside the courts in which he has been so happy and has made all his followers be, has also managed to be a number 1 regarding the more chrematistic question.
And all this, moreover, from middle-class origins and in which he was not completely involved in learning to play tennis. Son of Lynette, South African, and Robert Federer, of Swiss origin, He grew up with his older sister, Diana, with the salary his father earned as a representative of the Ciba-Geigy (Novartis) pharmaceutical laboratories.
None of the three effusively encouraged him to dedicate himself to the racket, but rather to keep his feet on the ground, even if he succeeded in any of the sports he practiced: skateboarding, swimming, ping-pong, football or badminton, as Bill Gates noted on his blog, adding that therein lay “part of Roger’s greatness.”
But that rebellious kid (he used to swear and throw the racket when he lost, his father said) He was forging a disciplined character that led him to start professionalizing at the age of 14. From there, there to jump to the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Practically every time there is talk of a man who has made history it is because behind there was a woman who was in charge of everything else that was not the reason for the myth of the husband of she.
In Roger’s case, it was another Swiss tennis player, Mirka Vavrinec, who after some injuries decided to prioritize her marital life. They married nine years after meeting and have four children.: two twins, Myla Rose and Charlene Riva, born that same 2009, and two other twins, Leo and Lenny, who came into the world in May 2014.
With her he has such an alliance that, he admitted, if he had told her to stop earlier, he would have done so. But what for, they had to ask themselves, if while he has been active, according to ATP data, Federer has pocketed around 30 million dollars. Exactly $130,594,339.
A figure that Rafa Nadal can reach, but that should not be left in shock to anyone who knew that the Helvetian entered an exclusive list last year: that of athletes who have generated more than 1,000 million dollars in their entire career, along with two soccer players (Cristiano Ronaldo and Leo Messi), basketball player LeBron James, golfer Tiger Woods and boxer Floyd Mayweather.
Federer is stillfor the 17th consecutive year, the highest paid tennis player according to Forbes, entering in 2021 approximately 90 million dollars. But having obtained more than 1,000 million is the result, for the most part, of his advertising contracts. Sometimes with amazing decisions: at 37 years old, in 2018, he left the brand that he had always dressed him, Nike, which had given him 150 million dollars during that time, for a contract of almost 280 million dollars with Uniqlo: about 30 million per year, since the duration of the contract is a decade.
But Roger is the image of so many other companies that bring him impressive annual profits: 8 million are paid by the Swiss watch brand Rolex, the coffee company Barilla, and Moët & Chandon champagne; 7 million, the Sunrise telecommunications company; 6 million the aviation company NetJets; five million and a new car every six months Mercedes-Benz; Lindt chocolates are 4 million a year; and a couple of million more thanks to its agreement with the Credit Suisse bank. Finally, Wilson only reports $350,000, although he provides all the rackets and balls he spends and it is unknown how much he earns for being an ambassador of tourism in his country.
To this must be added two of the companies in which it has invested:he Swiss footwear brand On, of which he is also the image and that in its IPO last year its value was estimated at around 6,000 million dollars; and Team 8, of which he is a co-founder, and that works as an intermediary, agency for many other athletes, organizer of events (hers is, for example, the Laver Cup) and that competes, among others, with Gerard Piqué’s Kosmos.
And he has also invested so much money in real estate, which he has especially in his country. As explained from the newspaper The country, Federer owns “an apartment on the 50th floor of a luxurious building in Dubai, a mountain house in the Swiss town of Valbella-Lenzerheide and another in Herrliberg, a municipality near the city of Zurich”, as well as the most impressive and the What has given you the most headaches? a spectacular glass house in Wollerau, in the canton of Schwyz, on the shores of the Greater Lake Zurich, Due to its location, several environmental groups tried to stop its construction, without success.
