Not all professional athletes make millions of dollars like those that participate in less traditional non revenue producing sports. In order to be able to be a professional athlete full time, many of these less popular athletes have to count on the products and money they get 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 earliest athletes to really do this was professional basketball player, Michael Jordan who used his basketball skills to promote many products in addition to apparel, toys, items and even basketball videos with his likeness on them.

Wherever there is room to promote a sponsor, they will find a method 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 players like Gabrielle Reece. Athletes are given wonderful package deals to promote a certain brand as a sort of spokesperson and in exchange they get compensated with paychecks and products. For the lesser known athletes, this is very helpful to offer them the needed income to be able to train full time. For other well paid athletes like professional baseball, basketball and football players it is simply the cherry on top.

Michael Jordan was one of the first professional athletes to really be endorsed by various sponsors and he ended up making more from those endorsements than he did from shooting hoops. Certain businesses saw the complete star power in Michael Jordan and knew he could make their product be noticed with him promoting it. 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 rose quickly and it became the top selling sports drink.

Now younger professional athletes that are making it to the big leagues see product endorsements as part of the entire deal when they sign professionally. Many new athletes that are confident in their sport and their ability to represent a product even hold out for multi million dollars endorsement these days. One example of that younger big time player is Le Bron James. He was in the headlines for his basketball abilities saying he was the next Jordan when he was in high school 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 in history is golfer, Tiger Woods. As an individual athlete, he is not paid by salary but rather by performance and the number of large golf tournaments he wins. Because he has been such a high profile, successful and marketable player, his endorsements deals are earning him many million each year on top of his golf earnings. He also has recently lost many of these sponsors with the recent scandals of his several infidelities.

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