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Not all professional athletes make a lot of money such as those that participate in less traditional non revenue accumulating sports. In order to be able to be a professional athlete full time, a lot of these athletes have to rely on the products and paychecks they receive from their sponsors and advertisers. Other athletes, that are constantly in the press however, make much more money playing their sport and even more sometimes from their sponsorship deals. One of the first athletes to really do this was NBA player, Michael Jordan who used his basketball skills to promote many products as well as apparel, toys, items and even basketball videos with his name on them.

Wherever there is space to promote a sponsorship company, they will find a way to do it whether it is on the helmet of a race car driver or in the form of a body tattoo to professional beach volleyball player Gabrielle Reece. Athletes are given wonderful package deals to promote a certain brand as a kind of spokesperson and in exchange they get monetary and product compensation. For the lesser known athletes, this is very helpful to provide them with the extra income they need to be able to train full time. For other well paid athletes like professional baseball, basketball and football players it is just icing on the cake.

Michael Jordan was one of the first professional athletes to start this trend and he ended up making more from those sponsors than he did from shooting hoops. Certain businesses saw the complete star power in Michael Jordan and knew he would make the perfect marketer for their product. One example was Gatorade which was a sports drink that had been around for quite a while but when they got Michael Jordan to endorse Gatorade, sales went through the roof and it became the top selling sports drink.

Now younger professional athletes that are coming into the game see product endorsements as part of the package deal when they become a professional. A lot of new athletes that are confident in their sport and their ability to sell items even hold out for multi million dollars endorsement these days. One example of that youthful professional player is Le Bron James. He was in the headlines for his basketball abilities saying he was the next Jordan when he was just a sophomore playing in Akron, Ohio. Now he is one the biggest paid athletes with multiple endorsements.

The largest grossing professional athlete to have the greatest amount of endorsement deals ever is PGA professional, Tiger Woods. As an individual athlete, he is only paid by performance and how many big golf tournaments he wins. Because he has been such a powerful and likeable force in his sport, his endorsements deals are earning him many million each year in addition to his golf earnings. He also has recently lost many of these sponsors with the latest scandals of his several infidelities.

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