Amid the hoo-ha about David Beckham’s mega-lucrative five-year contract to play in the US Major League Soccer, few bothered to make clear that the quoted £128m figure was utterly dependent on maximising sponsorship and attendance at games. Beckham has manfully tried to juggle those balls while making plain his desire to have a fourth World Cup finals appearance with England – which means regular football far closer to the watchful eye of Fabio Capello, hence the loan spell at AC Milan.
Beckham is clearly doing what he loves most – playing football – while he still can. It’s been a handsome living: he was on £116,000 a week in Spain, where high-earning foreign nationals are given generous tax breaks. A quarter of his earnings come from Asia, and his company Footwork Productions made £10.5m profit in 2007. But in time, the widely-derided “missus” might come to be the main breadwinner: Victoria Beckham’s dvb label is carving out a niche in the high-end fashion market.
2. Michael Owen £38m
Manchester United
Age 29
Michael Owen may be on a pay-as-you-play deal drastically reduced from his £110,000 weekly salary at Newcastle United, but money can’t buy what he wants: a squad place at a fourth World Cup finals. He’d lost his England place during an ill-fated spell at St James’ Park after a club-record £16m move in 2005.
Back in 2001, while scoring a hat-trick in Germany, he was the advertising face of breakfast cereal Nestlé Sporties; he also advertised washing powder Persil, in a contract worth £1m. He has been an ambassador for the Swiss watchmaker Tissot since 1998, has a contract with car manufacturer Jaguar, was a cover star for Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 and his Umbro deal nets him £2m a year, lifting his earnings to north of £7.5m a year.
His Owen Promotions company showed £7m net assets in 2007-08. He also has extensive racing and bloodstock interests and is said to be increasingly moving into this sphere – but with that market in the doldrums, falling property prices and a lower income this year, we cut Owen back to £38m.
3. Wayne Rooney £37m
Manchester United
Age 23
He’s come a long way from Croxteth – and not just down the East Lancs Road. Rooney left his Liverpool roots to sign for Manchester United in 2004 for a £31m fee and is paid £100,000 a week by the club; he has also had lucrative endorsement deals with Nike, Coca-Cola, Mercedes and EA Sports, which bring in around £6m a year.
His five-book Harper Collins deal netted him a £5m advance. OK! magazine paid £3.2m for the photographic rights to his wedding to Coleen, and the happy couple bagged more than £1m to front a major ad campaign by Asda, the shop where she once worked. The Rooneys live in a £4.25m home in Cheshire and have a Florida holiday home as well. Despite the property slump which has hit Rooney’s investments, we raise him slightly this year to around £37m.
4. Rio Ferdinand £30m
Manchester United
Age 30
Rio may be hampered my niggling injuries, but he’s comfortably rich. In April 2008, his salary was upped to around £120,000 a week. A lucrative boot deal with Nike provides extra funds to channel into his extensive property portfolio that takes in London, Morocco and the Caribbean.
He owns 60% of the White Chalk recording company which he hopes will help him realise his ambition to become a music mogul. It made a £100,000 loss in 2007-08, while his personal company, RGF Enterprises, only publishes abbreviated accounts.
5. Ryan Giggs £24m
Manchester United
Age 35
Knocking on 36 but still as productive as ever, Ryan Giggs is that rarity: a Manchester United player who is widely respected. His 20 years of top-flight salary have been bolstered by a clutch of lucrative sponsorship deals. Reebok paid him £6.5m over six years, and over the years he has appeared in adverts for Sovil Titus, Citizen Watches, Givenchy, Fuji, Patek Phillipe, Quorn Burgers and Celcom.
He signed a one-year contract extension at Old Trafford for 2008-09 and extended that by a year to June 2010. His weekly earnings are around £75,000. His company, Ryan Giggs Ltd, has around £2.9m net assets as at the end of 2007.
But with property values down we only raise Ferdinand slightly this year.
