Woods first athlete to earn $1 billion | Hacker News Reader

Woods first athlete to earn $1 billion

ohio.com

11 pointsalexitosrv25 comments

I have nothing against golf as a game, and I've played it a few times myself, but the idea that there's this much money floating around just in sticking logos on the shirts of guys who hit balls into holes to persuade other guys to buy new sticks with which to hit other balls into holes makes me feel like there's an awful lot of money being wasted.

Golf is the most popular sport for wealthy people. Ever watch (and not fall asleep) a golfing event on TV? Advertisements are for ridiculous luxury goods and asset management services.

Profitability of an advertising franchise = (value-per-impression) x (Number-of-Impressions)

Online social networking has an extremely low value-per-impression.

Professional golfing has an extremely high value-per-impression.

Which explains why Tiger Woods has generated more in profits than the entire history of the online social networking business.

And Woods alone attracts a not-inconsiderable portion of the audience: TV ratings for this year's US PGA Championship were around 50% higher than for the same tournament last year, the principal difference being Woods' absence in 2008 due to injury.

Prize money, appearance fees, endorsement fees, bonuses and his golf course design business were calculated to have pushed him over $1 billion.

Not just simply advertising for golf clubs. I wonder how much is golf course design business is worth.

Not to mention Woods is such a dominant player in his sport. Take salaries for baseball players and funnel it even more to the top players and you might have similar results.

You can say that about a lot of entertainment in general.

And I'm sure you also think people should not spend their money on Rolexes when a Casio will do, or on Mercedes when a VW will do...etc.

People pay for what they want to pay for.

Tiger Woods should be lauded. No crazy spending sprees. No expensive divorces. No being taken advantage of by friends and "business associates." No loss in risky business ventures.

He not only earned the money. He retained it too.

Do you actually know any of this other than the divorces part? I have no evidence that Tiger goes on wild spending sprees or has lost money on bad investments, but I have no evidence that he hasn't either.

FYI I am about as big a Tiger Woods fan as you'll find and if you made me take one side of a bet, I'd take yours, but this seems like an odd statement of fact.

I know his Dubai golf course is tanking. But I'm not sure he's not just lending his name to it.

He designed it.

I found this amusing and a little thought-provoking:

"Forbes says Tiger Woods has become the first athlete to surpass $1 billion in career earnings.

"The magazine estimates that golf's top-ranked player crested the plateau when he earned $10 million for winning the FedEx Cup on Sunday.

"Forbes reported on its Web site on Tuesday that Woods entered 2009 having earned $895 million since he joined the PGA Tour in 1996. Prize money, appearance fees, endorsement fees, bonuses and his golf course design business were calculated to have pushed him over $1 billion.

"The magazine says former NBA great Michael Jordan and former Formula One driver Michael Schumacher, at $800 million and $700 million, respectively, are Woods' closest competition in career earnings.

"More golf: Watson takes 2-shot lead"

So we have this stupendous amount of money discussed for four paragraphs, and then the cliché "And in other news..." is that Watson has taken a two shot lead somewhere or other. The implication that both datums are of roughly equal interest to the reader is amusing and makes me curious. Is it a machine that decides that? Or does a human actually believe that after reading about Tiger having earned a billion dollars the reader will next want to turn back to the details of a match instead of thinking more about investments and careers?

That is an interesting thought and one of the many problems with the way data is typically organized.

This IS the "sports" section of the paper, but whether or not this is the appropriate paradigm is certainly worth questioning...

It is the sports page. Even if it wasn't, how would a journalist segue from this to investment and careers?

"In other news, no matter how shrewd you are, you will never achieve a fraction of Tiger Wood's net worth. But let's talk about 401k plans, anyway."

or maybe

"If you happen to be rich, remember, Tiger Woods got there by playing golf - you had to spend 20 years trading natural gas futures in Calgary."

There doesn't seem to be a great angle...

I assume the "Watson" is Tom Watson and is one of a handful of golfers who deserves mention alongside Woods. He darn near won the British open at age 59 and, while not a billionaire, has made some crazy money getting the ball in the hole in fewer strokes than the other guys.

I guess Lebron didnt have his wish come true of becoming the 1st Billion dollar athlete. But he's got many more years to come. Im sure he will surpass that number. As it is whatever his new contract is after this season, and whereever it is, is going to be worth a ridiculous amount. Try the possibility of a $50 million per year deal with a European team. Not to mention the Nike deal, the movie being released this year, the management company, a profitable and public relationship with the greatest rapper on the planet (Jay-Z), and many more endorsements. Who knows, maybe he'll be the first $2 billion dollar athlete. He taking a page from the book or "Jordan". Brand yourself, and take away from the game, more than just championships, and shoes. But a name that is worth even more.

Its like his friend Jay-Z said, "Im not a businessman, Im A Business, man."

He would be able to make twice as much in salary if he went to Europe but he'd probably lose more money in the long-run by not playing in the NBA.

I get the feeling that Lebron will be able to leverage the Chinese ties which a new minority owner of the Cavs has and find a way to tap into the fledgling basketball market in China. Yao Ming has opened up a gigantic market for the NBA and someone is going to make a lot of money off of it.

Good point. That new Cavs Chinese ownership can definately be capitalized on, and their is a lot of Global money to be made from that deal. They loved him in China during the 08' Olympics in Beijing. Will be exciting to see what he's gonna do come next summer. Europe, Stay with the Cavs, NYC, Jersey (Brooklyn), etc. His options are endless. At one point, I thought the Jersey move was out because the team was having so much financial trouble with the possible Brooklyn move. But now with the new Russian ownership, along with his relationship to part-owner and friend, Jay-Z, that may be a viable option again.

I'm quietly pleased that the world had a billionaire author before a billionaire sportsperson.

Can someone point me in the direction of why this is HN worthy? I'm missing the connection here.

This way -> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=225879

I'd understand your point if this story was even remotely associated to HN, technology, or "hacking the system".

From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

I personally don't find this terribly interesting, but billionaire athletes are certainly a new phenomenon.

Worm holes, black holes, supernovas, big bang, the million other galaxies outside of ours — those are phenomenons.

Billionaire athletes (through endorsements) are the result of a sharp rise in consumer consumption, media saturation, and globalized market place the last 20 years. How is that a phenomenon?

For one thing, it makes me wonder...

Why is it that an entrepreneur that gets rich is frequently criticized for making too much money, taking it out of the pockets of his customers; while on the other side of the coin, the sports figures who haven't created anything (other than a feeling of satisfaction in fans, I suppose) are still celebrated?

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