The Athlete Billionaire Club 💰
Plus F1 rejects full electric power, Manchester United stock falls and the Chess takeover begins.
Welcome to Athletic Interest.
There are only six athletes in the world that have reached $1 billion or more in career earnings.
Tiger Woods ($1.72b)
Cristiano Ronaldo ($1.24b)
Lebron James ($1.16b)
Lionel Messi ($1.15b)
Roger Federer ($1.09b)
Floyd Mayweather ($1.08b)
Surprisingly, the athlete with the nickname ‘Billion Dollar Man’ is not even on this list.
Lewis Hamilton got this nickname before he had even won his first F1 race. Everyone just thought it was a matter of time before he earned a billion dollars.
With that landmark not yet reached, and his career nearing its end, we decided to break down the business of Lewis Hamilton - from crazy fashion to vegan Burger King - to try and see if he will ever live up to his nickname.
🍎 Sports Business Bites
🏎 While Hamilton may be facing the end of his F1 career, the series itself has its eyes firmly fixed on the future.
There has been a big debate in recent years on how F1, with its petrol-powered racing machines, can survive the transition away from fossil fuels.
Most governments seem to have decided that 100% electric cars are the future, but Formula 1 disagrees.
In a recent interview, F1 chief Stefano Domenicalli defiantly stated that Formula 1 will never go fully electric. He even criticised government leaders for putting so much pressure on car companies to transition completely to electric power.
In Formula 1’s opinion, there is an alternative to 100% electric power…a hybrid system that blends electricity with sustainable fuel.
From 2026, F1 cars will use 50% electric power combined with a normal combustion engine running on sustainable fuel. This so-called ‘E Fuel’ will be created in a lab and promises to be carbon neutral.
F1 claims that this fuel can also be used in road cars, potentially providing a cleaner way for combustion-powered cars to run on fuels.
That probably explains why several car companies have decided to enter F1 in 2026. This includes Cadillac, Audi, Ford, and potentially Honda and Porsche.
These car companies want to invest in electric technology while at the same time pioneering alternative fuel sources.
What better way to do this than through Formula 1, a sport credited with significant developments in modern transport technology?
🔴 Manchester United and Liverpool fans will also have been wondering about the future of their clubs in recent weeks.
While Liverpool was supposedly on the market for the last few months, it looks like current owners FSG have no plans to sell anything more than a minority stake.
“Will we be in England forever? No. Are we selling LFC? No. Are talking with investors about LFC? Yes. Will something happen there? I believe so, but it won’t be a sale.”
- FSG principal owner John W. Henry.
Manchester United, on the other hand, looks more likely to change hands over the coming months.
Both Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani of Qatar and the INEOS Group (headed by Sir Jim Ratcliffe) have submitted official bids for control of United.
Sheikh Jassim’s bid is for 100% of the club and would be a new record for a football club at a reported $6 billion. Meanwhile, Ratcliffe’s bid is supposedly for only 69% of the club.
There are also reportedly several private bids of various values that have been submitted to the club for consideration. There are even rumours that the likes of Elon Musk, Apple or Amazon may be interested.
While this news did see United’s share price jump around 10%, the price has since slumped back.
♟ While the Man Utd stock is going down, the Chess stock only seems to know one direction…
Several Chess content creators have been experiencing massive growth in views and subscribers. As reported in The Publish Press, Three of the sport’s biggest names - GothamChess, Hikaru and BotezLive - had more than 500m views on YouTube in January alone.
Chess.com, a site that allows you to practice chess at any level, has also seen massive growth. In December last year they peaked at 7m users, by January they had hit 10m.
So, why is Chess so popular all of a sudden?
The content creators above deserve a lot of credit for building their communities, but they also had some help from Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, and boxing.
Chess Boxing is a strange hybrid sport that involves players alternating between boxing and chess before one player is either KO or gets a checkmate. The sport has been surprisingly popular online, with some matches getting almost 3 million viewers.
Messi and Ronaldo also helped. The iconic photo of them engaged in an intense chess match is one of the most liked photos on Instagram and brought widespread attention to the game.
Then there is the strange cheating scandal that brought chess to the front pages of the newspapers. In September last year, Grand Master Magnus Carlsen unexpectedly resigned on his second move against Hans Niemann.
A few days later, Carlsen revealed that he quit because he suspected Niemann of cheating.
While Niemann denied the allegations, his previous record of cheating fuelled rampant speculation online. At one point there was a rumour that Niemann had used a vibrating sex toy to receive chess moves from another person.
📲 On the topic of all things crazy, it’s time for some social media madness.
And we start with the ultimate buzzwords of recent weeks…Artificial Intelligence.
AI seems capable of creating everything from your college essay to incredible works of art. We even used it for a part of our latest video on Lewis Hamilton.
A great example of the technology’s capabilities are these AI-generated football boot designs by Paul Parsons (using Midjourney.)
⚽️ Fabrizio Romano is probably pretty bored now that the transfer window has closed and it looks like he has been catching up on some football.
After watching the recent match between Arsenal and Aston Villa (Arsenal won 4-2 with two late goals) Romano was so impressed that he tweeted this:
Considering the weight that a Romano tweet has in the football world, many were quick to suggest that the Premier League was now officially the best league in the world.
This includes The Guinness Book of World Records…
Let’s wait until we see how the English teams do in the Champions League before we make it official.
💥 When watching Formula 1 on TV it can be easy to forget how truly dangerous the sport can be.
Most of us got a sobering reminder of the perils of motorsport in 2020 when Grosjean’s car crashed into a barrier and exploded into a fireball.
Luckily, Grosjean escaped with relatively minor injuries, but his car has seen better days.
Anyone that wants an even more powerful reminder can actually go and see the burnt-out shell of the car while it sits at an exhibit in Madrid.
