Soccer is the world\u2019s most popular sport. So the world\u2019s most marketable athlete must be a soccer player, right?<\/p>\n
Not this year.<\/p>\n
Basketball? Golf? Tennis?<\/p>\n
All widely played around the world, and all good guesses.<\/p>\n
In 2025, however, the athlete making the most money from sponsorships and endorsements is a baseball player: the Dodgers<\/a>\u2019 Shohei Ohtani<\/a>, of course.<\/p>\n Ohtani made an estimated $100 million in marketing revenue, Sportico reported<\/a> Wednesday, followed by the Lakers<\/a>\u2019 LeBron James<\/a> at $85 million, soccer stars Lionel Messi<\/a> ($70 million) and Cristiano Ronaldo ($60 million) and golfer Rory McIlroy ($55 million).<\/p>\n Ohtani joined the Golden State Warriors\u2019 Stephen Curry, tennis star Roger Federer, golf icon Tiger Woods and mixed martial artist Conor McGregor as the only athletes ever to hit $100 million in annual marketing revenue, according to Sportico.<\/p>\n In Ohtani, whose face appears on everything from airplanes<\/a> to skin care products<\/a>, baseball at long last has its Michael Jordan<\/a>: the superstar that has transcended sports and ascended to the status of global pop culture icon.<\/p>\n The timing could not be better for baseball \u2014 or worse.<\/p>\n Two months ago, a dramatic World Series<\/a> captured record numbers of viewers around the world<\/a>. Two months from now, the World Baseball Classic<\/a> takes center stage \u2014 led by Ohtani and the defending champions from Japan.<\/p>\n However, 11 months from now, baseball\u2019s collective bargaining agreement expires. If owners lock out players<\/a> in pursuit of a salary cap or other salary restrictions, the 2027 season would be at risk, and the face of sport could disappear<\/a> along with some or all of the season schedule.<\/p>\n The leaders in annual marketing revenue among athletes prior to 2025, according to Sportico: Curry ($100 million) in 2024; James ($80 million) in 2023; James ($90 million) in 2022; and McGregor ($180 million) in 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Soccer is the world\u2019s most popular sport. So the world\u2019s most marketable athlete must be a soccer player,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2406],"tags":[5,4890,39,69182,69179,1165,4332,4333,25026,774,57,3224,4331,69181,69180,4,1481,1479,468,69183,48115,302,49001,40894,1645],"class_list":["post-521344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-baseball","tag-baseball-player","tag-dodgers","tag-endorsement","tag-global-face","tag-la","tag-la-dodgers","tag-ladodgers","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-losangeles","tag-losangelesdodgers","tag-marketable-athlete","tag-marketing-revenue","tag-mlb","tag-month","tag-season","tag-shohei-ohtani","tag-soccer-player","tag-sponsorship","tag-sport","tag-sportico","tag-stephen-curry","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115897982188892236","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}