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Brands rush to sign up successful players on hugely lucrative deals.
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Only three Premier League stars make the top ten
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Some of the biggest boot deals are easy to predict, but others may surprise you.
For many of the world’s greatest footballers, wages make up merely a chunk of their total earnings. They have global appeal, and with their huge social media following are a marketer’s dream.
One of the most profitable commercial activities a player can secure is signing a boot deal, which requires them to wear certain products and advertise what the sports company sell.
But which footballers have the biggest deals of all? Here are the top ten boot deal earners of all time.
The 10 Biggest Boot Deals In Football
10) Mo Salah - £2.5m
As one of the world’s most exciting forward players, it is fitting that Mo Salah is an attractive proposition for global brands.
He is an extremely popular player at the top of his game and is especially attractive to advertisers in the Middle East and Africa.
Salah has a range of advertising deals with the likes of Vodafone and Pepsi, but it is Adidas who secured his rights for a boot deal. As part of that contract, he wears and promotes their X18 football boots.
9) Marco Veratti - £2.5m
Veratti’s inclusion in the list may surprise many, but he is undoubtedly one of the most underrated midfielders in world football and subsequently deserves such a bumper deal.
Veratti originally secured a relationship with Puma, but when that expired in 2017, Nike pounced and signed him up on a lucrative deal.
Sporting their Hypervenom Phantom III boots, the 28-year-old has several seasons left at the top and every sensible football prediction suggests they will be spent at PSG.
8) Paul Pogba - £3m
Regardless of his hot-and-cold form at Manchester United, Pogba remains one of the world’s most marketable players. It is no surprise therefore to see him on this list, due to his £3m per year deal with Adidas.
He is a key promoter of their Predator boots, as part of a ten-year deal that runs until 2024 and as an integral figure in the France team that won the 2018 World Cup, his ability to promote sporting brands remains undiminished.
Expect plenty of football bets backing him to move away from Manchester United soon, which is unlikely to affect his appeal to sponsors.
7) Antoine Griezmann - £3.5m
For a deal signed many years ago during his first spell at Atletico Madrid, Antoine Griezmann still makes our top-ten list due to the £3.5m contract extension he signed with Puma in 2015.
Griezmann has always been an attractive proposition for sponsors due to his elite talent and consistent success for club and country. His move to Barcelona only increased his appeal, which will still be huge even after his return to Madrid.
Griezmann has been with Puma since 2009, and in 2019 the sports company released a special boot, the limited-edition Future 4.1 NETFIT Grizi, to celebrate his ten-year association with them.
6) Gareth Bale - £4m
Despite a lack of game time in recent years, Gareth Bale has been a highly marketable player since he burst onto the scene at Tottenham Hotspur.
Along with lucrative sponsorship deals with numerous companies such as Lucozade and EA Sports, Bale also earns £4m per year with Adidas.
The brand first signed Bale when he was 16 years old, so they have a long-running association with the player.
5) Mario Balotelli - £5m
In fifth place, it is an established boot deal that dates back seven years and furthermore it’s for a player that may raise a few eyebrows.
In 2014 however, Balotelli’s stock was never higher. He was playing for Italy, and on top of his game for AC Milan, and his personality and unpredictability made him extremely marketable, when combined with his world-class talent.
Understandably then, when his existing Nike deal expired, Puma jumped in with a £5m a year deal.
Unfortunately for them, Balotelli’s star has since waned, and this turned out to be one of the sportswear giant’s less successful decisions.
4) Kylian Mbappe - £14m
Ronaldo may be Nike’s most important client, but Mbappe is certainly their poster boy, one of the best young football players on the planet, who at the tender age of 22 can already attract highly lucrative boot deals.
This deal was signed in 2019 and is worth £140m across its ten-year length.
Mbappe can often be spotted wearing and promoting the Mercurial Superfly VII Elite MDS 003 boot, and as one of the most marketable players in world football, Nike have made a sound investment, making the French phenomenon one of four current players whose boot deals eclipse all the rest.
3) Cristiano Ronaldo
Having shown little signs of slowing down, one of the most marketable footballers of all time will naturally attract huge sponsorship deals.
Ronaldo is the top earner for Nike, and thus their number one star. While the annual earnings from the deal will not put Ronaldo top of this pile, the total worth of the deal is thought to dwarf all others, valued up to a billion dollars.
He is only the third athlete to sign a deal for life with Nike, alongside LeBron James and Michael Jordan.
2) Lionel Messi - £18m
It’s hardly a surprise that one of the greatest players of all time also has one of the best ever boot deals.
The current worth of Messi’s commercial venture was unveiled after he signed an extension to his contract with Adidas in 2017.
With this contract, he also became the first footballer to front his own sub-brand of Adidas boots, called Adidas Messi. Deals like this have ensured that the Lionel Messi net worth remains one of the highest in sporting history.
1) Neymar - £23m
The Brazilian maestro managed to secure the biggest boot deal of all time in 2020 when he switched from Nike to Puma.
While the precise details of the deal are not widely available, it is thought the contract is worth £23m a year, double his old Nike deal, making it the largest individual sports sponsorship contract in history.
Neymar expressed his joy at wearing the same brand as many of his footballing heroes, such as Pele, Cruyff and Maradona. Many who enjoy online betting will be backing Neymar for further success in the coming years.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to AP Photo*
FIRST PUBLISHED: 29th October 2021
