I wrote the following in a previous column: “Under Armour has Jordan Spieth and Stephen Curry locked into endorsement deals. Can you think of two faces of the future you’d rather have?”
That led me to buy Under Armour’s stock, which of course immediately dropped below the 50-day moving average.
It also inspired me to wonder who the most valuable male athletes were when it came to endorsement value in the U.S. This is a column that asks the following: Whom would you draft first if you were a corporate executive looking to have an athlete represent your brand in this country? Of course, certain brands are going to appeal to certain sports. Phil Mickelson is highly marketable to older males watching golf, but he’s not going to crossover going forward. So, I wanted to see if I could compile a list of the most marketable athletes today, from here forward.
For my list, I’m sticking with American sports because I am sure nobody wants to read this column only to find out that F1 driver Lewis Hamilton beat out a cricket player named Virat Kohli for the top spot. On a side note, wow has RG3’s stock gone down since last year.
Also, we are going by value here in the U.S. because I’m not going to pretend that I have one iota of an idea as to whom and what are marketable abroad. So while Novak Djokavic is the best tennis player in the world and highly marketable overseas, his appeal is only so-so over here. Plus, some of his tweets, when read aloud, sound make him sound like the bad guy in Behind Enemy Lines.
In delving into the topic, I wanted to be as analytical as possible because isn’t it way more fun when analysts pretend to have done some scientific analysis when all they really did was subjectively assign some numbers? To determine marketability, I assigned the following all-important categories: 1) Age; 2) Unlikely to Become Entrenched in a Tiger-esque Scandal (“ULBET”); 3) Charm; 4) Likeability; 5) Excellence; 6) Current Population Outreach (“CPO”… also a fancy term I just made up for number of Twitter followers); and 7) Home Market.
In weighing the above six factors, I assigned greater value to numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 and less value to 7. Numbers 1 through 6 get a max of 15 points while number 7 gets a max of 10 points. No, I didn’t assign these point values just to manipulate the system to give me a max of 100 points. (Oh, like you wouldn’t have done the same thing.)
Home market got less value because with social media and television you can reach more people despite being in a smaller market.
On the flip side, age is important because, with athletes, the shelf life is not too long. Sure there are ad campaigns centered around retired athletes, but not the sorts that are expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars. ULBET is important because, well, it is. You don’t want to invest millions in a guy who’s going to force you to “part ways.” Excellence matters because everybody loves a winner. Quick, who finished 2nd in the 2013 MVP race? It doesn’t matter the sport. Less than 1 percent of the population is going to care about the also-ran.
Charm is important because you want the public to connect with the athlete marketing your company. How is likeability different from charm you ask? Floyd Mayweather is charming. He is not likable in the least. CFO matters because if an athlete already has a tremendous following, your advertising dollars just get that much more free exposure.
My goal with this column was to come up with the top ten most marketable male athletes in American sports for the American market. I’ll still keep it to ten, plus ties, which you can find below, but first, the list of the honorable mentions, with their RW Marketability points in parenthesis. Again, the max number of points possible is 100, with six of the categories being scored from 1 to 15, and home market getting a max of 10.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
T-25. Robert Sacre (58) Just making sure that you’re paying attention. Plus, I didn’t want to make him cry.
T-25. Andrew Wiggins (58)
24. Derrick Rose (61)
23. Dwight Howard (62)
22. Tony Romo (64)
21. Novak Djokovic (65)
20. Peyton Manning (66)
19. Anthony Davis (70)
18. Rory McIlroy (71)
17. John Wall (72)
16. Andrew Luck (73)
15. James Harden (74)
14. Russell Westbrook (75)
T-12. Bubba Watson (77)
T-12. Blake Griffin (77)
TOP 10 MOST MARKETABLE MALE ATHLETES ALIVE
T-10. KYRIE IRVING (78)
Age: 11
ULBET: 13
Charm: 13
Likability: 13
Excellence: 11
CPO: 11
Home Market: 6
Despite his affable personality, Kyrie takes a hit because of his injury history. Name a part of the body and Kyrie has probably sat out a few games because of it. So, despite his young age, there is tremendous risk going forward. That said, if you don’t love Uncle Drew then we can’t be friends. He’ll also get secondary glow off of LeBron in Cleveland for the next few years and grow into more of a brand if he can stay upright and on the court. He’s a joy to watch play.
T-10. JORDAN SPIETH (78)
Age: 15
ULBET: 12
Charm: 13
Likability: 14
Excellence: 12
CPO: 5
Home Market: 7
As I am sure you know, Jordan Spieth recently won the Masters wire-to-wire, becoming the second-youngest champion in the tournament’s history behind Tiger. And it wasn’t just golfers taking notice. Not that he had to do much, but this PGA Tour ad was terrific. Plus, it seems like he’s got a solid inner circle. As the NFL Draft guys would say, Spieth has tremendous upside.
CLAYTON KERSHAW (79)
Age: 13
ULBET: 15
Charm: 10
Likability: 15
Excellence: 14
CPO: 3
Home Market: 9
If you Google Clayton Kershaw, the first thing that comes up is his foundation, which states the following: “Kershaw’s Challenge was founded by Clayton and Ellen Kershaw. Kershaw’s Challenge is a Christ-centered, others-focused organization.” Are you kidding me? He’s a Cy Young winning version of Tim Tebow! As for the knock on his charm, Kershaw may be charming as hell, but he doesn’t let you in because he and his wife are too busy building houses for kids in third world countries. He’s an advertiser’s dream but doesn’t really care that he is.
T-7. RUSSELL WILSON (80)
Age: 12
ULBET: 15
Charm: 13
Likability: 14
Excellence: 10
CPO: 9
Home Market: 7
He did have an ugly concussion, and does bear a striking resemblance to Bobby Jindal, but Russell Wilson is the quintessential underdog turned champion. He’s even mentioned in an Eminem lyric. I worry about his longevity at QB, and he does have some work to do on his game, but Wilson’s a top-10 QB at a very young age. Plus, he’s already a marketing machine.
T-7. CHRIS PAUL (80)
Age: 7
ULBET: 14
Charm: 13
Likability: 12
Excellence: 13
CPO: 12
Home Market: 9
CP3’s transformation into Cliff Paul has been great for his brand. They even doled out Cliff Paul argyle Clipper jerseys at the Clippers/Warriors game I attended this year, you know, the game where Steph broke his ankles. Shout out to all you Clippers fans! There are a few knocks on CP3, namely that he is getting up there in years and his injury total is climbing, not to mention that his likability takes a hit because of his intensity coupled with his flopping. But if an insurance giant like State Farm can make you the face of its ad campaign, you must be doing a whole lot right.
6. AARON RODGERS (81)
Age: 12
ULBET: 12
Charm: 13
Likability: 13
Excellence: 15
CPO: 9
Home Market: 7
For someone who is a recent NFL MVP, Rodgers sure doesn’t have a ton of Twitter followers when compared with someone like LeBron. Some may say that it is because Rodgers can come off as arrogant, which hurts his charm and likability. However, football fans root more for teams than NBA fans who tend to have favorite players, thus making the NBA players more popular in their own right and more valuable to the advertisers. In Rodgers’ case though, the discount double check caught on and it is foreseeable that Rodgers’ stock will only continue to rise once Brady and Peyton retire.
5. KEVIN DURANT (82)
Age: 11
ULBET: 13
Charm: 12
Likability: 14
Excellence: 13
CPO: 13
Home Market: 6
Kevin Durant has close to 10 million Twitter followers. When healthy he is automatically in the MVP hunt and the Thunder are guaranteed to contend. I’m not so sure I love his new ad and he can be truculent with the media, but Kevin Durant is the real MVP. The only thing we really worry about here is how awfully his injuries have been handled. This seems to be a running concern in this column unfortunately.
4. J.J. WATT (83)
Age: 14
ULBET: 14
Charm: 13
Likability: 15
Excellence: 15
CPO: 6
Home Market: 6
His charm took a slight ding because this gawdawful commercial would never go away. Aside from that and his still shy of 1,000,000 Twitter followers, there isn’t much you can say about Watt that isn’t supremely positive. He’s the greatest force in the nation’s most popular sport. He’s willing to play through whatever horrible injury caused his face to look like this. Plus, he does great work with his charity and writes get out of work notes for random Twitter followers who support his charity events. Do you know anybody who doesn’t like J.J. Watt? Didn’t think so.
3. MIKE TROUT (84)
Age: 15
ULBET: 13
Charm: 13
Likability: 15
Excellence: 15
CPO: 5
Home Market: 8
Mike Trout, at age 23, is the best player in baseball only most of the country hasn’t realized it yet because they’re still not done drooling over Derek Jeter despite his retirement. Trout is a 5-tool player who is about as nice as they come. I mean, how can you not love Trout? He does have to work on his commercial spots, but there’s plenty of time for that. Expect Trout to climb to the top sometime in the next few years.
2. LEBRON JAMES (86)
Age: 10
ULBET: 14
Charm: 14
Likability: 12
Excellence: 15
CPO: 15
Home Market: 6
If you’re looking for someone to represent your brand for this year, you are absolutely going with LeBron and his 20.9 million Twitter followers. However, if you’re looking to the future, LeBron is 30 years old, came into the league straight from high school, and has been carrying franchises ever since.
To those wondering why LeBron didn’t get a perfect likability score, can you imagine anybody ever doing this to a Steph Curry jersey? I didn’t think so. LeBron may be the king, but his reign is coming to an end in the near future, as in now. In other words, I just rigged a system to make sure LeBron didn’t win this contest. I mean, um, LeBron isn’t the most marketable male athlete in American sports anymore.
1. STEPHEN CURRY (90)
Steph took a hit in CPO with 2.09 million Twitter followers, but something tells me that number will skyrocket soon. He takes a hit in age not because of his actual age, but because of his basketball mileage/injury history. Other than that, what is there not to like? He’s already mastered the SportsCenter commercial. And if that didn’t float your boat, how about this ad with Jamie Foxx? Oh, and he makes Kitchen Warriors videos with his wife and adorable baby. Steph has arrived and Nike will rue the day that they didn’t sign him.
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