For much of 2020, the world’s best athletes were on the sidelines, labouring for lower money, playing to empty seats, or being sequestered in competitive bubbles to combat a pandemic that has robbed professional sports of billions of dollars. Still, for the best of the best, things couldn’t be better—at least in terms of their financial weight.
The top 10 highest-paid athletes in the world earned $1.05 billion in pretax gross earnings over the last 12 months, up 28% from last year’s top earners. The total earnings are just a few million shy of the $1.06 billion mark achieved in 2018, when boxer Floyd Mayweather earned $285 million in a 12-month period, nearly entirely from his 2017 pay-per-view bout with Conor McGregor.
McGregor hits the winning punch this year, having utilised his unrivalled fame in mixed martial arts to develop a thriving business outside of the Octagon. McGregor made a total of $180 million in the last 12 months, the majority of which came from the $150 million sale of his majority stake in whiskey brand Proper No.
Twelve to Proximo Spirits. It’s the 32-year-first old’s time at No. 1 and his second time in the top 10 (he was No. 4 with $99 million after his fight with Mayweather in 2018). LeBron James was on the verge of joining that exclusive club. The Los Angeles Lakers star earned $96.5 million, which is a new high for an NBA player.
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