Fastest, Strongest, Richest: How Top Olympians Stand to Gain From Their Wins

As the cream rises to the top at the Olympic Games in London, the Michael Phelps's, Ryan Lochtes and Usain Bolts of the world are looking to cash-in on their unprecedented medal hauls and superhuman performances. Suddenly, athletes who were waking up at 4 a.m everyday and struggling to achieve their Olympic dream, while their parents were shelling out thousands of dollars and nearing the poorhouse, can now be overnight millionaires.

Someone like Michael Phelps will spend the rest of his life living off the proceeds from that single window of peak athletic performance he had once in his late teens and early 20s – just the thought of that is incredible. So now that we all know who the best of the best really are, everyone's wondering what happens now? We'll tell you what happens – these men and women are about to get crazy rich, and we're not even talking about countries paying their athletes for medals, we're talking about the wild world of commercial endorsement.

Click the image below to see Olympians with the most star power (and earning potential):

SLIDESHOW: WHICH ATHLETES WILL PROFIT THE MOST?

Gabby Douglas
Potential Endorsement Revenue: $2 to $4 million per year, over the next four years.
Current Endorsements: Kellogg, Procter & Gamble

The first American to ever win the Team and All-Around Gymnastics Competition at the same Olympic Games may be able to take her pearly-white smile all the way to the bank."What she brings to the table is the smile and the personality," AJ Maestas, president of Chicago-based Navigate Marketing, which specializes in research, valuation and sponsorship, told The Los Angeles Times."If her business is well-managed and her career stays on track, she should make between $2 million and $4 million in endorsement revenue per year for the next four years."

But first, she will probably be tasked with getting her mother out of bankruptcy, a fate she blamed on Timothy Douglas, her alleged deadbeat dad. "So, my mom had to front all these bills," Gabby recalled. "My dad didn't really pay the child support. He was really short [on money]," she told The New York Post.

Michael Phelps
Potential Endorsement Revenue: More than $100 million over the course of his lifetime
Current Endorsements: Under Armour, Speedo USA, Subway, Head & Shoulders, Nike, SwimRoom.com, Pure Sport, Rosetta Stone, Hilton Hotels, AT&T, PowerBar, Omega and Visa.

Going into London 2012, Michael Phelps was already making $6 million a year from endorsements. But, now that he's the most decorated Olympic athlete of all time, that amount is expected to double, or even triple, over the next few years. Plus, the fact that Phelps is retiring from the pool is music to the ears of any company who wants his endorsement. This is because The International Olympic Committee has something called Rule 40, part of which prohibits athletes who endorse non-Olympic sponsors from promoting those companies before, during or after the Games. That means that if a non-sponsor wants to have a Olympian endorser, it can't capitalize on their relationship when the athlete is most valuable. But with Phelps no longer competing, companies can still use him during future Olympic broadcasts when people will remember him most.

He'll also be open to wooing from new companies, especially since ESPN reports he'll be looking for a new beverage deal, as his ownership stake in Pure Sport never really took off like he thought it would. Pretty much all of his existing endorsement deals extend through the 2016 Games in Rio, but should he have another incident like the "Bong Photo of 2009," more than just Kellogg may drop him this time.


Ryan Lochte
Potential Endorsement Revenue: $6 million a year
Current Endorsements: Speedo USA, Mutual of Omaha, Gillette, Gatorade, Procter and Gamble, Ralph Lauren, Nissan, and AT&T

Before their boy was beating teammate Michael Phelps at his own game, Loche's family had put their house in foreclosure, but hopefully those endorsements that will come with his multiple gold medal winning performance will save their home. Not that he wasn't doing too badly prior to London 2012, since the endorsements he has already total two to three million per year.

Though, he's pretty much any company's dream pitch man, given his attractiveness to the ladies, his relative freshness in the public consciousness, (After all, his medal winning performances in Beijing were firmly eclipsed by Phelps) and his more relatable temperament. Sponsors would not have to deal with the guarded, diva-like behaviour they likely would with Phelps.


Missy Franklin
Potential Endorsement Revenue: $1 million to $5 million a year
Current Endorsements: None

We all know that this 17-year-old swimming phenom they call "The Missile" wants to maintain her amateur athletic status so that she can be NCAA eligible and swim in college and even her father was quoted by The Denver Post confirming that is the plan, unless, of course, some "horrendous amount of money" forces the family to think twice.

Well, that "horrendous amount of money" may be just around the corner. Sports marketing experts say that this Olympic darling could amass a fortune between one and five million dollars if her handlers play it right. "She's got a great smile,"Andrew Stroth, a Chicago-based sports attorney specializing in endorsement deals, told The Post. "Her story's fantastic. She seems like an all-American girl, a young lady who really cares about people inside and outside the pool. If Missy Franklin decided to pursue Madison Avenue and corporate America, she could make $2 million to $5 million if her advisers have a strategic plan."

Maestas predicts that Franklin and her family give in to the million dollar carrot that will no doubt be dangled in front of them very soon. "I'll be surprised if (the family) doesn't take a serious look at dropping amateurism. I honestly think she could make $2 million a year for four years. It's not crazy to think she'll get a four-, five- or six-year deal for $2 million a year."


Aly Raisman
Potential Endorsement Revenue: $1 million to $6 million a year
Current Endorsements: None

Unlike swimmer Missy Franklin, this 18-year-old gymnastics counterpoint to teammate Gabby Douglas has announced that she will indeed go pro. Her professional career starts when she goes on the multi-city Tour of Gymnastics Champions in September with the rest of her gold medal-winning teammates and she partakes in the the base salary of $100,000. No doubt she will turn her multi-gold performance into green with tons of endorsement offers too.

"There's no way she's going unnoticed at this point. She has the makings for an amazing, amazing story that has the potential for oodles of endorsements," Emerson College marketing professor David Gerzof Richard told The Boston Herald. "If you look into the past focus on gymnasts, there is Nastia Luikin. She pulled down Visa, AT&T, Adidas. Shawn Johnson, she pulled down Adidas, Cheerios, Ortega and Coca-Cola."


Usain Bolt
Potential Endorsement Revenue: $40.6 million
Current Endorsements: Puma, Hublot, Virgin Media, Nissan, Visa and Soul Electronic

Even before he obliterated the field for his second straight 100 metre title, 25-year-old Usain Bolt was the highest-paid Olympian outside of basketball and tennis. As the first man to achieve back-to-back gold in the 100m dash since American Carl Lewis, experts estimate Bolt will double his current $20.3 million annual haul.

"That 10 seconds is worth $2 million a second, for the next 12 months easy," The Age quoted Australian celebrity agent Max Markson, as saying. Just to put that in perspective, Puma, the largest sponsor for the current fastest man alive, pays him $9 million a year. For the money to get bigger would be absolutely mental, but it's almost guaranteed, according to those in the know.

"Generally speaking the larger the audience and bigger appeal an athlete commands, the higher their commercial value and size of the endorsement deals they should expect to net," said Chris Styring, the general manager of research company Sweeney Sports and Entertainment. "Athletes such as Roger Federer and Usain Bolt who compete at the highest levels in sports that are easily accessible, globally broadcast on free-to-air channels and appeal to both genders will generate big off-track deals."


Jennifer Ennis
Potential Endorsement Revenue: £2 million next year
Current Endorsements: Jaguar, Powerade, British Airways, Aviva, Olay and more.
This heptathlete had already become the first female British athlete to reach £1 million in endorsements before London 2012 kicked off and now experts say her medal count means she could double that number by the end of 2013.
"She's had a pretty good year already this year. It looks like her earnings last year were somewhere in the region of £600-700,000. This year it's looking like £1 million already from her endorsement deals just in the run-up to the Olympics. She already has a strong catalogue of endorsements," Simon Chadwick, professor of sport business strategy and marketing at Coventry University Business School, told Huffington Post UK.
Though he cautioned that she has to be careful with signing more endorsements than she can handle: "It will be interesting to see if she will be able to renegotiate her existing contracts. In terms of bringing in new sponsors, I think this could be a bit of an issue for her. She's already got, as far as I can see, seven endorsements and to sign more could be a strain on her. Once you get up to eight, nine, 10, that's a lot of commercial endorsement deals to fulfill."

If you ask us, that's a pretty excellent problem to have.