Not all professional athletes make millions of dollars like those that participate in smaller non revenue producing sports. In order to be able to be a professional athlete full time, a lot of these athletes have to count on the products and paychecks they receive from their sponsors and advertisers. Other athletes, that are in the limelight however, make much more money playing their sport and even more sometimes from their sponsorship contracts. One of the earliest athletes to really do this was professional basketball player, Michael Jordan who used his basketball skills to promote several products as well as apparel, toys, items and even basketball videos with his likeness on them.

Wherever there is room to promote a sponsor, they will find a method to do it whether it is on the helmet of a race car driver or in the form of a temporary tattoo for professional beach volleyball players like Gabrielle Reece. Athletes are given wonderful package deals to endorse a particular brand as a kind of spokesperson and in exchange they receive monetary and product compensation. For the less famous athletes, this is very helpful to provide them with the extra income they need to be able to train full time. For other well paid athletes in sports as professional baseball, basketball and football players it is just icing on the cake.

Michael Jordan was one of the first professional athletes to start this trend and he ended up making more from those sponsors than he did from shooting hoops. The inital companies saw the total star power in Michael Jordan and knew he could make their product be noticed with him promoting it. One example was Gatorade which was a sports drink that had existed for some time but when they got Michael Jordan to endorse Gatorade, sales went through the roof and it became the top selling sports drink.

Now younger professional athletes that are coming into the game see product endorsements as part of the package deal when they become a professional. Many new athletes that are confident in their sport and their ability to represent a product even hold out for multi million dollars contracts today. One example of that youthful professional player is Le Bron James. He made it into the headlines for his basketball abilities saying he was the next Jordan when he was just a sophomore playing in Akron, Ohio. Now he is one the largest paid athletes with multiple endorsements.

The biggest grossing professional athlete to have the greatest amount of endorsement deals in history is golfer, Tiger Woods. As an individual athlete, he is not paid by salary but rather by performance and the number of large golf tournaments he wins. Because he has been such a high profile, successful and marketable player, his endorsements deals are earning him several million every year in addition to his golf earnings. He also has recently lost many of these sponsors with the latest scandals of his many infidelities.