Feb 17, 2024, 7:00 AM ET
Michael Jordan turns 61 with a new title in his career: becoming a billionaire. This is the story of the Bulls legend’s new success.
Upon reaching the age of 61, the legend of Michael Jordan expands, but not only on the courts, where he shone for two decades until he established himself as the most important basketball player of all time, but off them, because in recent times he has demonstrated to have an equally great talent for business.
This has earned him a wealth of around $3 billion dollars to be part of the select group of billionaires on the planet, occupying one of the 2,640 places on the list published each year by Forbes magazine, but being the first among those who stepped on a court, a mention he now shares with Tiger Woods and LeBron James, who are several thousand greenbacks behind.
It is the seventh title for MJ, who won six with the Chicago Bulls in the NBA, in a career without comparison in the most important basketball league on the planet, but who has demonstrated his quality in another area, which is not baseball, where He also tried it, but in the nose for investments that allow him to make money and climb to rub shoulders with the most powerful people on the planet.
Curiously, the takeoff of the businessman Jordan occurred at the same time as his professional sports career, in 1984, when he made the jump from the University of North Carolina to the NBA, when he was taken by Chicago with the third overall selection in that Draft. behind Hakeem Olajuwon and Sam Bowie.
At that time he had offers from at least three footwear companies for him to wear them in the main Arenas in the United States, but the winner was Nike (with which he signed for five years and 2.5 million dollars), mainly for two reasons: create his own label, Air Jordan, and give him a share of the royalties generated from the sales of his sneakers, a risky move chronicled in the movie Air.
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From there, everything changed for both of them, because while the player won the Rookie of the Year Award, the new shoes, launched in April 1985, sold 70 million dollars by May and more than 100 by the end of that calendar, making it which formed the basis for building around the phenomenon.
That first individual recognition also served as the beginning of what would come later: two three-time championships with the Bulls (1991-1993 and 1996-1998), all as the Most Valuable in the Finals, five times named MVP (1988, 1991, 1992 , 1996 and 1998), elected 14 times to the All-Star Game (he was the MVP in three editions), in addition to being the Best Defensive Player in 1988 and obtaining two gold medals in the 1984 and 1992 Olympics.
An unparalleled journey, which catapulted him as the best to have ever stepped on the court and also earned him sponsorship from McDonald’s, Hanes and Gatorade, among others, to become a great brand, which would continue to generate fortune, even after retirement and even more than as a professional athlete.
In his 15 seasons in the NBA, Jordan received $94 million in salary and signing bonuses, but he was only the highest paid in the last two in which he played with the Bulls in 1997 and 1998, when he won his last championships, at the same time. beating the Utah Jazz on both occasions, but through sponsorships he pocketed around 2.4 billion dollars.
It was from these accounts that MJ realized that he could transcend sports and become a true businessman, who provoked the same feelings of admiration and suspicion as when he flew to score baskets and make the thousands of fans happy at the United Center. from Chicago.
A year after his official retirement with the Bulls, Jordan returned to the NBA, but as part of the group led by Ted Leonsis that acquired 44 percent of the Washington Wizards and in September 2001 he put on that team’s uniform for a third stage as a professional.
He retired permanently in April 2003 and shortly afterwards he also left his position on the Wizards board, but that only served as a first experience for what he would do later with his capital and business vision.
In 2006 he returned to the offices of an organization, this time as a minority shareholder of the then Charlotte Bobcats and by March 2010 he became the first former player to be the majority owner of a franchise, paying around $275 million dollars for increase your impact.
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Although the situation did not improve for the squad, with just three short trips to the playoffs, MJ did get returns on his investment, because in 2019 he sold 20 percent of his shares and four years later he gave most of it to a group led by businessmen Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall, but for 3 billion dollars, an extraordinary sum in the NBA.
The transaction earned him entry into another select group, the Forbes 400, which includes the 400 richest people in the United States. He had already entered the billionaires list since 2015, which only includes those who have more than a billion dollars. In its accounts and in the most recent edition, number 37 had 2,640 members.
Even since the publication of that list, on April 4, it is estimated that Jordan has earned a billion dollars more, especially thanks to the sale of Charlotte, but it is not the only reason why he has been able to consolidate himself as a figure in the market and his portfolio is broader than the repertoire he showed on the courts.
For example, the most recent check collected from Nike was for 260 million dollars, thanks to the fact that the company obtained more than 6 billion dollars from the Air brand alone, which has had an expansion in recent times with the sneakers that They came back into fashion as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the documentary The Last Dance.
However, Air Jordan has broken boundaries and has just celebrated the University of Michigan’s NCAA title in college football, in addition to being the supplier of the Paris Saint-Germain soccer team, which until the previous campaign brought together three stars of that sport: the Argentine Lionel Messi, the Brazilian Neymar and the Frenchman Kylian Mbappé.
What started his empire continues to be the cornerstone of his profits after the departure of the NBA Board of Owners, but it is not the only thing, he now has a squad in the Nascar automobile series, called 23XI Racing, in which he said which he will focus on after leaving the Hornets.
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In 2020 he joined as a special advisor to the board of directors of DraftKings, a fantasy betting and league company, he is also co-owner of Cincoro tequila, which he sported during his interviews for The Last Dance, he also invests in the opening of restaurants and has a Nissan car dealership in Durham, North Carolina.
His portfolio of business activities included a small portion of the Miami Marlins of Major League Baseball, he opened his Grove XXIII golf course in 2019 also in Florida and was part of a $305 million injection into Dapper Labs, a startup behind the cards. virtual NBA Top Shot.
A winner on and off the court, Jordan is not satisfied with being part of a business, but seeks to make it bear fruit and take him to the next level, which is why, almost a decade after retiring as the best player in basketball in history, he got his seventh ring, entering the Forbes list of billionaires, now he is also part of the 400 and as he did every season, he is going for more.
2024-02-17 01:16:25
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