Professional Athletes, Individual Sports

The U.S. Department of Labor reports that athletes and sports competitors had mean annual earnings of $51,370 in May 2019. The lowest 10 percent earned $19,280 or less, while the highest 10 percent earned more than $208,000.

Salaries, prize monies, and commercial endorsements will vary from sport to sport; a lot depends on the popularity of the sport and its ability to attract spectators, or on the sport's professional organization and its ability to drum up sponsors for competitions and prize money. Still other sports, like boxing, depend on the skill of the fight's promoters to create interest in the fight. An elite professional tennis player who wins the U.S. Open, for example, can earn over $1 million, with the opportunity to earn more bonus prize money. Add to that the incredible sums a U.S. Open-champion can make in endorsements and the tennis star can earn more than several million dollars a year. According to Forbes, tennis player Roger Federer was the world's highest-paid athlete in 2020, with earnings of $106.3 million including endorsements, followed by soccer players Cristiano Ronaldo ($105 million) and Lionel Messi ($104 million). These figures are misleading, however; to begin with, top athletes usually cannot perform at such a level for very long, which is why a good accountant and investment counselor comes in handy. Secondly, for every top athlete who earns millions of dollars in a year, there are hundreds of professional athletes who earn less than $40,000. The stakes are incredibly high, the competition fierce.

Perhaps the only caveat to the financial success of an elite athlete is the individual's character or personality. An athlete with a bad temper or prone to unsportsman-like behavior may still be able to set records or win games, but he or she won't necessarily be able to cash in on commercial endorsements. Advertisers are notoriously fickle about the spokespeople they choose to endorse products; some athletes have lost million-dollar accounts because of their bad behavior on and off the field of play.

Other options exist, thankfully, for professional athletes. Many go into some area of coaching, sports administration, management, or broadcasting. The professional athlete's unique insight and perspective can be a real asset in careers in these areas. Other athletes have been simultaneously pursuing other interests, some completely unrelated to their sport, such as education, business, social welfare, or the arts. Venus and Serena Williams, for example, became involved in the fashion industry as a side business and developed their own clothing lines. Many athletes also continue to stay involved with the sport they have loved since childhood, coaching young children or volunteering with local school teams.