A Century Of The Business Of Sports

Michael Jordan revolutionized sports marketing and later made history as the first former player to own a majority stake in an NBA team. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

Forbes is celebrating its centennial this year and is looking back at the industries that have shaped our country during that time. From the infield to the end zone to lucrative sidelines, here are the moments that defined the last 100 years in the business of sports.

1919: The Green Bay Packers are formed by Curly Lambeau and George Calhoun to play other teams in Wisconsin and Michigan. The club joined the newly-formed NFL in 1921. Despite playing in the smallest market in pro sports, the Packers generated revenue of $441 million last season.

1921: Boxing promoter Tex Rickard builds a 91,613-seat stadium in Jersey City to house a heavyweight championship fight between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier. It becomes boxing’s first million-dollar gate at $1.8 million (or $25 million today).

1930: Babe Ruth signs a contract with the Yankees worth $80,000 ($1.15 million in today’s dollars). When asked about a salary higher than President Hoover, Ruth famously (but perhaps apocryphally) replies: “I had a better year than he did.”

1934: Lou Gehrig becomes the first athlete to appear on the Wheaties box. Dozens of sports legends such as Bruce Jenner, Mary Lou Retton, Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps will follow.

1947: Jackie Robinson breaks baseball’s color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers. His rookie salary is $5,000 ($55,000 in 2017 dollars).

1949: German sports giant Adidas is formed by Adolf “Adi” Dassler after a falling out with his brother, Rudolf, who established Puma one year earlier. Adidas revenue hit a record $21 billion last year. Big brother Rudi’s Puma lagged behind with $4 billion.

1949: Joe DiMaggio becomes the first baseball player with a $100,000 salary.

New York Yankees center fielder Joe DiMaggio speaks with manager Casey Stengel in the dugout. (AP Photo)

1957: Sports heads west of the Mississippi as the Giants and Dodgers abandon New York for California, which triggers a stream of relocations and expansion teams in all leagues.

1962: The NFL agrees to collectively sell TV rights with teams ranging in size from Green Bay to New York getting the same cut. (Today, owners still split more than $7 billion a year from media deals evenly).

1965: Rookie quarterback Joe Namath signs a four-year contract for an unprecedented $427,000 ($3.35 million in 2017 dollars), including a $200,000 (or $1.57 million today) signing bonus with the New York Jets in the upstart American Football League. The AFL and NFL announce a merger the following year.

1973: George Steinbrenner leads an investor group that pays $10 million for the New York Yankees with Steinbrenner promising to be a hands-off owner. The team is worth $3.7 billion today.

1984: Nike signs Michael Jordan to a $500,000 ($1.18 million) per year shoe deal as a Chicago Bulls rookie. The Jordan Brand is still flying high years after his retirement, generating $3.1 billion in revenue for Nike last year.

1989: Jerry Jones buys the Dallas Cowboys for $150 million. The team is currently the most valuable in sports at $4.8 billion.

(Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)

1994: The George Foreman Grill is launched with the boxer receiving a cut of each device sold. Five years later, Salton pays him $138 million to get out of the royalty deal, which was more than he earned during his career in the ring.

1996: Juwan Howard becomes the first athlete in team sports to sign a $100 million deal when the Washington Bullets (now Wizards) give him a seven-year, $105 million deal ($164 million today). A month later, Shaquille O’Neal signs a $120 million deal.

2002: The New York Yankees launch the YES Network and dozens of regional sports networks follow over the next fifteen years pumping billions into sports. The biggest deal: $8.35 billion over 25 years for the rights to Los Angeles Dodgers games.

2014: Michael Jordan is crowned a billionaire by Forbes thanks to years of Nike payouts and his 90% stake in the Charlotte Hornets amid soaring valuations of NBA teams.

2017: Yankee legend Derek Jeter is part of a group that buys the Miami Marlins for $1.2 billion. Jeter has a small equity stake but will run baseball operations.

Three years after Forbes magazine was off and running, the NFL launched in 1920 with teams like the Decatur Staleys (now Chicago Bears) paying $100 (or about $1,200 today) for the rights to operate a club. It was money well spent. The average NFL team is now worth $2.5 billion and 87 sports teams overall are valued at 10-figures.