Ronaldo, Messi and Mbappe lead Forbes' highest-paid athletes list

Every year, Forbes collapses 12 months of salaries, prize money, bonuses and sponsorship deals into one figure per athlete, then stacks those figures against each other. The result is among the most closely watched business rankings in sports. Forbes' highest-paid athletes list measures who converted performance, fame and timing into the largest pretax paycheck. It does not measure who played best. The gap between the two is wide for several names on the list.

The money rarely sits where casual fans assume. Soccer and boxing routinely produce the top overall earners, even though both have far smaller domestic U.S. television deals than the NFL or NBA. International broadcast rights, pay-per-view splits and global sponsorship markets operate on a scale no single national league matches. Basketball players dominate the endorsement column instead, stacking signature shoe lines worth tens of millions a year on top of guaranteed maximum contracts. Tennis runs on a third model: prize money is modest by comparison, so the biggest names draw almost everything from brand partnerships, sometimes for years after they stop competing.

Forbes separates the two income streams deliberately. On-field earnings cover salary, winnings and bonuses paid for competing. Off-field earnings cover endorsements, appearance fees, licensing and business ventures. Reading the split tells you what kind of athlete you are looking at. A player whose salary dwarfs his sponsorship income is being paid to perform. A retired player still clearing nine figures is being paid for a reputation built over two decades.

The 10 athletes below topped Forbes' most recent full accounting of athlete earnings, with figures covering roughly a 12-month period and reported before taxes and agents' fees. They come from five sports, with playing contracts paid out in Asia, Europe and North America. Their earnings models range from per-bout fight purses to ownership stakes in the companies that sponsor them. What follows is each athlete's total, the split between the two columns, and where the money actually came from.

Illustration: Quartz

Cristiano Ronaldo led Forbes' ranking with about $136 million in total earnings, roughly $46 million from salary and winnings and about $90 million from endorsements and other off-field income. The on-field portion came almost entirely from his contract with Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia's Pro League, signed after he left Manchester United in late 2022.

That deal ranks among the largest in team sports, which puts Ronaldo's position at the top of the list on different footing from most athletes earning at this level late in a career. His playing salary did not shrink as he entered his late 30s. It grew, and it grew in a league with a fraction of the broadcast reach of the Premier League or La Liga.

The off-field side rests on a Nike $NKE partnership that has run for most of his professional career, alongside the CR7 line of clothing, fragrance and underwear he licenses under his own initials and shirt number. His endorsement income outpaced his salary during his years at Real Madrid and Juventus as well. The ratio on this list is not a late-career anomaly.

The move to Saudi Arabia drew criticism within soccer over the competitive standard of the Pro League. It did not cost him commercially. His sponsors are mostly global consumer brands whose interest tracks audience reach rather than the quality of his weekly opposition. Ronaldo also holds the most-followed account on Instagram, a direct channel to fans that no club affiliation alters.

His case marks a shift in where the biggest paydays in sports are generated. Saudi Arabia's spending across soccer, golf and boxing created destinations able to outbid established European clubs, particularly for players in the final stretch of their careers. Ronaldo signed before the wave of arrivals that followed him into the Pro League, including Karim Benzema and Neymar.

Illustration: Quartz

Lionel Messi ranked second with roughly $130 million, divided almost evenly between on-field pay and off-field income. His salary came from Paris Saint-Germain, the French club he joined in 2021. The move ended a two-decade run at Barcelona, which could not fit a new contract under La Liga's wage rules.

The endorsement half of that total rests on an Adidas partnership dating to his early twenties. Deals with Pepsi, Budweiser and other consumer brands with worldwide distribution fill out the portfolio. Sponsors pay for a trophy record few players in any era can claim, including eight Ballon d'Or awards and four Champions League titles.

Argentina's win at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar closed the one gap in that record. A senior international title had eluded him until the 2021 Copa América. The final against France in Lusail settled an argument that had trailed him for years. The win lifted his value in markets where national-team success counts for more than club results.

The salary-to-sponsorship ratio separates him from the player directly above him on the ranking. Messi's earnings have tilted toward brand income for most of his career. That pattern owes something to his long stay at a club with tighter financial limits than the state-backed owners now setting the top of the wage market.

His later transfer to Inter Miami produced a pay package with almost no precedent in team sports. Alongside base salary, it included an option to acquire equity in the Major League Soccer club. Separate arrangements tied his income to Adidas merchandise sales and to Apple $AAPL's MLS Season Pass subscriptions.

That structure gave him a share of the growth he was hired to create rather than a fixed figure set in advance. It also reflected leverage available to almost no other athlete: a league treated his signature as an investment in its own valuation and priced the contract to match.

Illustration: Quartz

Kylian Mbappe earned roughly $120 million, with about $90 million of it coming from salary and bonuses at Paris Saint-Germain. He is one of the few athletes near the top of the ranking whose on-field pay far exceeds what sponsors pay him.

The size of that figure traces to a contract standoff that played out in public. PSG moved to stop Mbappe leaving on a free transfer. The extension he signed in May 2022 paired a very high annual wage with a signing bonus that reshaped his earnings for the seasons that followed. Real Madrid had been the widely reported alternative. Staying in Paris left him on terms few clubs in European soccer could match.

His off-field income is substantial without being central. A long-running Nike $NKE relationship anchors it, alongside deals with the Swiss watchmaker Hublot and EA Sports, which has put him on the cover of its soccer game. That series is now published as EA Sports FC. Those partnerships add a layer to the total rather than carrying it, the reverse of how most of the leaders on this list are built.

The 2022 World Cup sharpened his profile. Mbappe scored a hat trick in the final against Argentina and finished the tournament as its leading scorer with eight goals. France lost the final on penalties. He was 23 at the time.

His place this high on the list also reflects how PSG operates. The club is owned by Qatar Sports Investments, and it has used player wages as a direct instrument for competing with Europe's traditional powers. That approach sits outside the spending norms most major European clubs follow. Few teams in any sport pay a single player on that scale.

Mbappe did eventually leave. He joined Real Madrid on a free transfer in the summer of 2024, once his PSG contract ran out. The departure was the outcome the club's spending had been built to prevent.

Illustration: Quartz

LeBron James earned roughly $119.5 million, of which about $44.5 million came from his NBA salary with the Los Angeles Lakers. The other $75 million arrived from endorsements and business holdings built across two decades in the league.

The anchor is Nike $NKE. James signed a lifetime agreement with the company in 2015, reported at the time to be worth more than $1 billion over its full term. It remains one of the longest-running sponsorship relationships any athlete has held. His signature shoe line has run continuously since his rookie season, giving Nike a product cycle that has outlasted the careers of most players he entered the league with.

Around that sits a set of companies he owns rather than merely represents. SpringHill Company, the media and production firm he co-founded with Maverick Carter, develops film, television and branded content. He also holds an equity position in Fenway Sports Group, the ownership consortium behind Liverpool FC and the Boston Red Sox. That is a stake in a Premier League club rather than a fee for appearing in its advertising.

Longevity separates his entry from the rest of the ranking. James has sat among the highest earners in sports for more than 15 consecutive years, a stretch almost no one in team sports matches. Injury or decline usually closes the peak earning window well before a player's late 30s. Playing into his 20th NBA season kept both halves of his income intact at the same time. He passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA's all-time leading scorer in February 2023, a milestone that kept him in front of a national audience well past the age most stars fade commercially.

That structure has since become a template inside basketball. Younger NBA players now pursue equity stakes, production companies and minority positions in other leagues rather than treating endorsement checks as the endpoint. James did not invent the athlete-as-business model. His balance sheet is simply the version other players in the sport cite most often when explaining their own ventures.

Illustration: Quartz

Canelo Alvarez earned roughly $110 million, and nearly all of it came from fight purses rather than sponsorship deals. His off-field income is a small fraction of what he collects on fight night, which makes him the clearest case on this list of an athlete paid to compete rather than paid to appear in advertising.

Boxing pays on a different clock than team sports. There is no annual salary and no guaranteed contract tied to a season. Fighters are paid per bout, usually through a guaranteed purse plus a share of pay-per-view or streaming revenue. One night can produce more money than a full year of games in most leagues. A boxer at Alvarez's level fights two or three times a year, and a single appearance can be worth more than a season's salary for a well-paid NBA or NFL starter.

Alvarez, a Mexican super middleweight who has won world titles in multiple weight classes, has spent years as one of the sport's most dependable pay-per-view attractions. His bouts scheduled around Mexican Independence Day weekend in September have become a fixture of the boxing calendar, and that date ranks among the sport's most commercially valuable.

His broadcasting arrangement with DAZN forms another significant piece of the structure, alongside purse payments negotiated through promoters. A platform deal of that kind works differently from a consumer endorsement. It pays for the right to carry the fights rather than for the fighter's image in an advertising campaign.

The thin sponsorship column is partly a function of the sport itself. Boxing offers no year-round schedule for brands to attach themselves to, and it has no league-wide marketing operation comparable to the NBA or European soccer. Alvarez's commercial deals stay modest next to those of soccer and basketball stars earning similar totals. His place near the top of the ranking traces almost entirely to what happens inside the ring.

Illustration: Quartz

Stephen Curry earned roughly $102 million, combining his Golden State Warriors salary with endorsement income built around Curry Brand, his signature line with Under Armour $UAA. Few players have a shoe partner that created a standalone label for them instead of adding them to an existing list of endorsers.

The salary side comes from a Warriors contract among the largest ever signed in the NBA. It reflects his place at the center of a franchise that won championships in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022. The endorsement side traces to 2013, when Curry left Nike $NKE for Under Armour. He was a promising guard at the time, not yet a two-time MVP. That decision reshaped Under Armour's basketball business and gave Curry influence over a sponsor's product strategy that few athletes hold. Under Armour spun the partnership into Curry Brand in 2020, placing his shoes, apparel and a youth sports commitment under a single name.

His commercial value is tied to a specific skill. The three-point shooting he popularized changed how NBA offenses are built, and that stylistic signature gave marketers a clear identity to work with.

Away from basketball, Curry co-founded Unanimous Media, a production company behind film and television projects. He has also moved into golf through Underrated Golf, which works to widen access to the sport for young players from underrepresented backgrounds. Curry plays the game at a competitive amateur level and has appeared in professional-circuit events on sponsor exemptions.

His sponsors extend well past athletic apparel into categories that favor an athlete with a low-controversy public profile. His off-court income has accumulated steadily across more than a decade rather than peaking once and falling away.

Curry's entry shows that the highest earners in a league are not always its most physically imposing players. Shooting accuracy, sustained team success and an early bet on a smaller sponsor added up to a nine-figure year.

Illustration: Quartz

Roger Federer earned roughly $95 million, almost entirely from endorsements rather than prize money, despite having retired from professional tennis in September 2022. He is the only athlete near the top of the ranking who did not compete at all during the period measured.

The portfolio behind that figure was assembled over two decades on tour. Federer held long-term agreements with Rolex, Mercedes-Benz, Credit Suisse and Uniqlo, the Japanese apparel company he signed with in 2018 after ending a clothing deal with Nike $NKE that dated to the start of his career. He also took an equity stake in On, the Swiss running shoe brand, and helped introduce it to North American buyers. That stake works differently from a standard sponsorship fee, because its value tracks the company's growth rather than a fixed annual payment.

Tennis produces modest prize money relative to what its biggest names eventually collect. A Grand Slam singles title pays a few million dollars, well below the annual salary of a top NBA or European soccer player. Federer banked more than $100 million in career prize money, but that total accumulated across 24 seasons on tour. None of his individual prize-money years came close to what his brand partnerships now pay him annually.

The post-retirement figure also reflects something specific about his public profile. Federer competed from 1998 to 2022 without a doping case or a serious scandal, and built a reputation for composure on court. Sponsors in conservative sectors — Swiss watchmaking, private banking, luxury carmaking — place a premium on that kind of association. They are not paying for ranking points.

His continued presence on the list points to a broader pattern in athlete pay. Once a sponsorship rests on personal image rather than active competition, it can keep paying out for years after a final match, provided the athlete's standing holds. Federer also remains visible through the Laver Cup, the team competition his management company helped create and first staged in 2017. The event keeps him attached to the sport without requiring him to play in it.

Illustration: Quartz

Dak Prescott earned roughly $89.5 million, with the overwhelming majority arriving from his Dallas Cowboys contract rather than from sponsorships. The multi-year extension he signed made him one of the highest-paid quarterbacks in NFL history at the time he agreed to it, and the payout structure is what lifted his single-year total onto this ranking.

NFL deals work differently from the fully guaranteed contracts standard in the NBA and MLB. Much of a quarterback's headline figure is not promised in full. The money a player actually collects in a given 12-month window swings on when signing bonuses land and whether the deal has been restructured for salary cap reasons. Prescott's extension carried a large signing bonus, the mechanism teams use to hand a star a lump sum up front while spreading the cap charge across later seasons. That timing, more than his weekly game checks, explains the size of the figure.

His off-field income is the smaller half of the ledger, built on deals including a partnership with Adidas alongside regional and national sponsors. The platform is unusual for a quarterback at his earnings level. Dallas draws a national television audience whether the team is contending or not, which gives its starting quarterback a sponsorship reach that players on comparable salaries in smaller markets struggle to match.

Prescott's place on the list also marks how far quarterback pay has climbed relative to the rest of the sport. Each new extension at the position sets a reference point, and the next player entering negotiations treats it as a floor. The cycle repeats often enough that a figure described as a record one offseason is passed within a year or two.

Football produces fewer names at the top of global earnings rankings than the NFL's domestic revenue might suggest. Active rosters run to 53 players, cap space is finite, and endorsement money concentrates in a handful of positions — quarterback above all.

Illustration: Quartz

Kevin Durant earned roughly $89 million, drawn from his NBA salary — paid by the Phoenix Suns after a midseason trade from the Brooklyn Nets — and endorsement income anchored by his signature shoe line with Nike $NKE.

That sneaker partnership dates to his arrival in the league in 2007 and has produced a new KD model nearly every year since. Durant re-signed with Nike in 2014, after Under Armour $UAA made a competing bid, in one of the largest footwear deals ever given to a basketball player.

Off the court, his money runs through Thirty Five Ventures, the media and investment firm he co-founded with his business manager, Rich Kleiman. The company operates Boardroom, a sports business media outlet, and holds positions in startups and sports properties. Those include a minority ownership stake in Major League Soccer's Philadelphia Union. The arrangement treats endorsement cash as capital to deploy rather than income to collect.

The February 2023 move from Brooklyn to Phoenix did not interrupt his pay. NBA contracts are fully guaranteed and follow the player through a trade, so a midseason deal changes which team cuts the check and little else. An NFL player moved under comparable terms can lose unpaid salary, because most contracts in that league are guaranteed only in part.

Durant's commercial value has held up across a series of team changes, which is less common than it sounds. Sponsors often favor players rooted in a single city, since regional campaigns lose their footing when a star relocates.

His playing record carried the brand through each move. Four NBA scoring titles, two championships with the Golden State Warriors, Olympic gold medals with the U.S. men's national team and a steady presence on social media kept sponsors engaged regardless of which jersey he wore. That stability is what separates his portfolio from players whose marketing value is tied to one roster and one market.