Raking It In

The rest of the world may be buckling under the financial crisis, but Olympic superstar Michael Phelps is sitting pretty these days on mounds of cash. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that America’s golden boy is set to return to Beijing next week to "sign off on a historic seven-figure sponsorship" with DMG Entertainment to “become the spokesman for Mazda in China in a campaign that will include TV commercials and personal appearances.”

The report says that jawdroppingly lucrative offers are coming so fast, that his agent estimates that his charge could earn as much as “USD 100 million in his lifetime” and has the luxury to pick and choose deals that “fit with the swimmer’s lifestyle” (said agent recently turned down a USD 5 million offer from Blackberry) – must be nice.

Even before last year’s Olympics, Phelps was pulling in between USD 4 to 5 million a year in endorsements, and now, of course, his net worth has skyrocketed tenfold to around USD 40 to 50 million.

By comparison, check out China Sports Today’s list of China’s top paid athletes as of last July, which includes annual earnings totals (salary and endorsements) for Yao Ming (RMB 250 million or around USD 36 million), hurdles hero Liu Xiang (pre-“Olympic crash” RMB 70 million or around USD 10 million) and Olympic diver Guo Jingjing (RMB 15 million or a little over USD 2 million).

Like Phelps, the fortunes of Yao and Guo (save for, perhaps, the injury-plagued Liu) have undoubtedly increased since the Olympics, but all of them combined still do not match up to the biggest moneymaker of them all, Tiger Woods, who Forbes predicts will have raked in USD 1 billion in career earnings by 2010.

Links and Sources
Sydney Morning Herald: Phelps cashes in Beijing cheques
BloggingStocks.com: Money winners of 2008: Michael Phelps, the golden boy of Beijing
China Sports Today: China’s Highest Paid Athletes
Luxist.com: Tiger Woods Will Be World's First Billionaire Athlete