Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, LeBron James, and now Magic Johnson. The former NBA star has joined the exclusive club of athletes-turned-billionaires. Forbes estimates the 64-year-old's net worth to be $1.2 billion, thanks to his ownership stakes in various sports teams and other investments. Johnson has stakes in the NFL's Washington Commanders, the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Major League Soccer's LAFC. Johnson (whose real first name is Earvin) made just a fraction of his wealth as a player, somewhere around $40 million ($110 million in today's dollars) over 13 seasons with the Los Angeles Lakers. However, he became savvy in how to invest that money, and ESPN notes that Johnson has previously credited former Lakers' owner Jerry Buss with helping on that front.
Outside of sports, Johnson has a 60% stake in the insurance company EquiTrust, which now has $26 billion in assets and accounts for the biggest chunk of his net worth. He's also in partnership with Loews to set up movie theaters in Black neighborhoods and with Starbucks to open cafes in Black neighborhoods as well. The BBC notes that Johnson told the All the Smoke podcast earlier this year that he would have been much richer sooner had he known enough about money as a young player to accept an endorsement deal with Nike in the 1970s that would have given him shares in the company.
"My family didn't come from money, that's one thing that hurt us sometimes," he said. "When you don't come from money, you don't know. I didn't even know what stocks [were] at that time. ... Can you imagine? 45 years, $5 billion that stock would have been worth today." Johnson retired from the game after the 1990-91 season after testing positive for HIV but returned four years later after successful treatment. He retired for good after the 1995-96 season. (More Magic Johnson stories.)
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