Michael Jordan has won many titles during his life. He was twice an All-American and then an NCAA champion. He was the NBA Rookie of the Year in his first NBA season. He won six NBA championships. During those championships, he also won six NBA Finals MVP awards. He was the NBA MVP five times. He was a scoring champion 10 times. They even gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Michael also has some financial milestones under his belt. Michael was the first athlete in sports history to break the $ 30 million per year salary barrier, accomplishing that feat before the 1996-1997 season. The following season he earned $ 33.14 million, which after adjusting for inflation, is worth the same as earning $ 53 million today.
He has consistently earned more sponsorship money than any athlete on the planet, thanks to sponsorship deals dating back to the mid-1980s, notably starting with Gatorade and Nike. Michael earned "only" $ 93 million in NBA salary, but as of this writing, he has earned $ 1.4 billion in endorsements (before tax). Thanks to a trademark lawsuit a few years ago, we know that Michael made $ 500 million from Nike alone in the decade between 2002 and 2012.
Many people assume that Michael Jordan is today, and always has been, the richest athlete in the world. Believe it or not, that is false. "Richest athlete on the planet" is a title that MJ had not owned … until now!
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We've been tracking Michael Jordan's net worth here at CNW since 2009 when he first entered with a half-trillion-dollar fortune.
He first became a billionaire in 2014. So how was he not the richest athlete on the planet at the time?
Unfortunately, over the years, Michael has faced stiff competition from a former Romanian tennis player whose name he may not even recognize. You certainly wouldn't recognize him on the street (unless you were a HUGE tennis fan in the late sixties and seventies).
Ion Tiriac had an impressive professional tennis career that included 22 career doubles championships, two gold medals, and multiple major tournament finals in various individual international tournaments.
After retiring from the sport, he was a highly sought-after professional coach. Then he would go to train for Ilie Năstase, Mary Joe Fernández, Guillermo Vilas, Marat Safin, Steffi Graf, Goran Ivanišević and, most importantly, Boris Becker.
Ion presided over Boris Becker's rise to the world ranking # 1. He coached Germany-born Becker from the mid-1980s to 1993. That period of time would prove to be a very interesting moment in world history, especially for someone with strong eastern and western ties like Ion.
Living in Germany with Becker, Tiriac saw first-hand that value and the expansion of Western business practices.
In 1990, he used his own money to found the first private bank in Romania. He called the bank after himself, Banca Tiriac. He then launched retail businesses, car dealerships, an airline, and an insurance company. Today the Tiriac Empire includes a large portfolio of residential and commercial real estate. It handles everything through a number of companies including Tiriac Holdings, TiriacAIR, HVB Tiriac Bank, Allianz-Tiriac Asigurari Romania, TiriacAuto, Tiriac Leasing, and Tir Travel.
The Berlin Wall fell in 1991. Two years later, Ion's personal fortune exceeded $ 100 million. By the year 2000 it was worth $ 500 million. In 2005, his net worth was estimated at $ 900 million. In 2007, Forbes declared Ion the 840th richest person in the world with a net worth of $ 1 billion.
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Note that at this point, in approximately 2007, Michael Jordan's net worth was less than $ 500 million. Jordan's personal fortune would not exceed $ 1 billion until June 2014, at which time Ion was worth $ 1.5 billion.
In the past six years, MJ's fortune has skyrocketed, thanks largely to his investment in the Charlotte Hornets. He first invested in the Hornets in 2006, when the team was called Bobcats. In 2010, he paid $ 175 million to buy the team's biggest investor, BET founder Robert Johnson. By 2014, the value of the equipment had increased to around $ 500 million. Within a year, the team was worth $ 600 million. In 2019, Michael sold a small part of his stake to a group of hedge fund managers with a valuation of $ 1.5 billion.
As the value of the Hornets increased, so did Michael's net worth of $ 1 billion in 2014, $ 1.2 billion in 2017, $ 1.5 billion in 2018, and $ 1.9 billion in 2019.
Unfortunately, for Michael, throughout that period, Ion Tiriac's $ 2 billion net worth was always out of reach.
Unfortunately for Ion, the later half of 2019 and the first half of 2020 have not been so kind to their fortune. The recent global economic crisis tops a difficult year for any empire built on finance, real estate, hotels, and travel. At the time of writing this article, we estimate Ion Tiriac's net worth to be $ 1.2 billion.
As of April 2020, Michael Jordan's net worth is $ 2.2 billion. Even if our estimate of $ 1.2 billion for Ion Tiriac drops by $ 200- $ 300 million, Michael is finally by far the richest athlete in the world for the first time in his life.
Congratulations to MJ on another impressive professional achievement!