Michael Jordan is the richest basketball player in history

Micheal Jordan may be 60 years old but he continues to be the richest basketball player in the world. His wealth continues to soar even though he ended his NBA career at 40.

Bloomberg Billionaire Index currently rates him as having a net worth of $3.5 billion mainly as a result of his longstanding licensing deal with Nike and the majority stake in NBA’s Charlotte Hornets. He sold his stake in June 2023. The franchise has been valued by Sportico at $1.77 billion. Jordan has kept a 5% monitory stake in the franchise.

In addition to this he continues to benefit from Nike sponsorship as he earns an average of $255 million every year from the Nike contract he fist signed in 1984 when he was with the Chicago Bulls.

The contract contained the stipulation that he be paid 5% on all Air Jordan sales.

Strangely enough Jordan never intended to sign with Nike at the time saying that he preferred Adidas and Converse shoes.

In an interview 14 years ago, Jordan himself admitted that.

“You know what, the thing is, I never wore Nike shoes until I signed the Nike contract. All throughout college, we wore Converse, and up to that point, my favorite shoe was Adidas shoes. At that time, when everybody was trying to recruit me about what shoes to wear, I was pro-Adidas the whole time. And once I went through the presentation with Nike, they really made a great effort of having my input on the shoe, any shoes that I wanted to wear,” said Jordan.

When Jordan first signed the contract, Nike expected to sell 100,000 pairs in the first year but in just one month they sold more than 450,000 pairs. These days,a Nike Air Jordan 1 ‘Legends of Summer Black’ model costs around 7,000 dollars, while last year, Jordan released the Air Jordan 37.

“In all honesty, I never wore Nike shoes until I signed with Nike. I was a big Adidas, Converse guy coming out of college,” is another famous quote from Jordan in one of his interviews.

The photo above is from Wikipedia