Jim Brown, considered by many sports historians to be the greatest football player ever, was also one of the most forward thinking athletes of his generation. While playing running back for the Cleveland Browns from 1957 to 1965, he often carried a briefcase to practices and games.
When asked by a curious inquirer why he toted the case with seemingly the same sense of purpose as he did pigskin, Brown informed the questioner he did so because he was a businessman. Fifty years later, another Cleveland icon has established himself as arguably the shrewdest and most influential athlete in sports.
LeBron James has constructed his personal brand over the past two decades and leveraged it into a global economic force.
In December of 2015, James and the behemoth multi-national corporation Nike established a landmark lifetime deal that some long-time sports business analysts speculates is valued at roughly $1 billion. Terms have yet to be disclosed, but it was the first lifetime deal Nike has consummated with one of its star athletes.
Over the course of his 13-year career, James has earned nearly $175 million from his NBA contracts. And with an influx of money from a new nine-year, $24 billion deal with ESPN and TNT that will begin next season and essentially triple the league’s annual revenue from its television and digital rights, James will almost assuredly approach or surpass $400 million in career earnings before he retires.
His earnings from various endorsement deals and corporate partnerships will dwarf that figure. As staggering as the aforementioned numbers are, it is the manner in which James has formed a team of agents, managers and advisers consisting primarily of childhood friends and how they have tightly controlled the shaping of his image and significantly dictate the terms of the Cavaliers’ operations that makes him the vanguard of the modern-day athlete.
Although his economic value to Cleveland is intangible, it has been suggested that the 31-year-old James’ return to the Cavaliers in the summer of 2014 was worth $500 million to the franchise and between $250 million and $400 million annually to the city.
Long ago James sought advice from billionaire Warren Buffet, one of the world’s richest men. It’s only a matter of time before he joins Buffet in the exclusive billionaires club.