Despite Floyd Mayweather Jr. flaunting all his wealth on social media, and also despite the pronouncements made by LeBron James that he will become the first billionaire-athlete, His Airness Michael Jordan quietly became one with hardly any fanfare.
On March 2, Forbes magazine released the list of world’s 290 new billionaires and Michael Jordan was one of them, reports Yahoo! Sports.
Forbes reported that the 52-year-old Michael Jordan has become a billionaire as early as June last year when he raised his stake in the NBA basketball franchise Charlotte Hornets from 80% to 89.5%.
Jordan purchased the majority stake of then Charlotte Bobcats in March 2010 for $275 million. But the worth of NBA teams have significantly increased by two to four-folds already when former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer bought the Los Angeles Clippers franchise for a whooping $2 billion in May of last year.
Skyrocketing values of NBA teams
As a result of the Steve Balmer acquisition of the LA Clippers, three new NBA team owners became instant billionaires including Michael Jordan. Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago Bulls and an old boss of His Airness, also joined the list with a net worth of $1.3 billion. Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander is also on the list with a fortune of $1.6 billion.
Despite headways gained by LeBron James and other athletes in terms of endorsements, Michael Jordan is indisputably the best-paid athlete of all time. That’s in addition to his reputation as arguably the greatest basketball player of all time.
In terms of endorsements, Nike speaks a lot for Michael Jordan and vice versa. Nike’s Jordan brand grossed an estimated $2.25 billion in 2013 and His Airness got paid for it for a cool $90 million without even breaking a sweat – something which a Floyd Mayweather Jr. cannot really do because of his not-so-favorable image to the public.
And to show how lucrative team-owning in the NBA has become as a business, 19 of the 30 franchise owners in the league are in the Forbes list of billionaires, counting James L. Dolan whose individual net worth is close to a trillion but whose family fortune is estimated to be worth more than $4 billion.
One of the richest in America
Michael Jordan’s official entry into the list of Forbes’ billionaires in the world also makes him the 513th richest person in American.
In the US, the category is called being obscenely rich but Michael Jordan, knowing his competitive spirit, would surely not rest on his laurels and will continue to make headways in and among the billionaires club.
The only hurdle that Jordan and the other team owners will be facing is when they sit face to face with the NBA players’ union a few years down the road for the CBA negotiations of the league.
The owners’ group claim that since 11 of the 30 team owners are not in the billionaires club, they are losing money which the National Basketball Players Association certainly do not believe so especially with the owner’s share of the league’s $24 billion media rights deal. But that’s another story already.