It was announced this week that David Beckham made $17 million in endorsements while playing for the LA Galaxy this past year. It seems like a tremendous amount to pay an athlete who is in a sport that no American’s are watching.
I decided to look back and see what endorsements looked like 10 years ago.
In December of 1999 George Foreman signed a deal with a company called Salton. No one knew who Salton was but they were about to get the rights to the Foreman Grill. Foreman himself stood to make $137.5 million over five years as the spokesman. Little known fact; Salton wanted Hulk Hogan to originally but Hogan turned the idea down! Whoopsies!
In September of 2000 Tiger Woods signed a $100 million five year deal with Nike. Today, as we all know, Tiger has grown into the richest athlete this side of Mars. Prior to this deal Tiger had signed another 5 year deal with Nike in 1996 for $40 million. That $100 million back in 2000 was just the beginning. Nowadays Nike doesn’t like to disclose exactly how much moolah Woods is bringing in off of their deal.
Grant Hill was drafted by the Detroit Pistons with the third pick in the NBA Draft after graduating from Duke in 1994. FILA, like most others knew Hill was going to be the second coming of Michael Jordan. They jumped on the opportunity and signed Grant to a 7 year, $80 million deal. If you recall Hill was also a spokesperson for McDonald’s and Sprite back in the day.
You would think this $80 million deal is laughable after Hill unfortunately became injury plagued. However, Hill helped FILA jump from seventh to third in shoe market over this time. FILA has since been bought by a South Korean firm and has all but disappeared from the US market.
Around the same time a fresh-faced youngster from Georgetown University hit the NBA scene. His name; Allen Iverson. Reebok thought he would make a great spokesman. They signed him to a 10 year $50 million deal in 1996. About 5 years later, coming off the Sixers NBA Finals run, Reebok signed Iverson to a lifetime deal.
Those are four of the biggest deals going back 10 years ago. In general, they were all successful on some level– a somewhat surprising fact. Especially when looking at the Grant Hill deal on the surface.
