Magic Johnson will forever go down as one of the greatest point guards to ever play in the NBA. When he retired from the sport, he didn’t stop succeeding. He decided to dive deeper into the world of business and created numerous opportunities for himself in that regard. It’s helped him accumulate a nice fortune.
Is Magic Johnson A Billionaire? No, Magic Johnson currently isn’t a billionaire though his enterprise is worth over a billion dollars. That enterprise has helped Johnson improve his net worth, but it hasn’t pushed it over that billion mark. He is currently worth around $620 million as of 2022.
Johnson has been able to pick up this worth for a handful of reasons, the first being his enterprise and others being endorsements and his playing career.
Magic Johnson Enterprises
Magic Johnson Enterprises is the name of this company and it’s one of the largest reasons for his success in the business world. This is an American investment company owned by Johnson himself. The company didn’t start out well but later turned into a billion-dollar ordeal. He was able to get in on companies like Burger King, 24-Hour Fitness, T.G.I Friday’s, Sodexo and a handful of sports franchises. In fact, they’ve owned numerous properties of those companies. For example, they had thirty-one different Burger King locations and thirteen 24-Hour Fitness locations. Along with all of that, they created something called Magic Johnson Theaters which was active in four different cities. Magic Johnson Enterprises was able to get into a large marketing deal with Best Buy to boost their sales. Around this time, they were also involved with Starbucks, as they held onto 105 licenses around the country. They sold them back to the company in 2010 but it still made them quite a bit of profit in return. Johnson was able to get a 4% stake in the Los Angeles Lakers and after holding onto it for a little while he sold it back for around $27 million. This enterprise also worked with the Canyon-Johnson Urban Fund. This didn’t do very well at the start, but it later wound-up financing over thirty-one real estate developments and even created the thirty-two story TransAmerica Center Complex in Los Angeles. That building was flipped and sold for $205 million. Oh, and there was also that time when Johnson and this company got involved with the Los Angeles Dodgers on a $2 billion bid. Johnson was then able to obtain a stake in their company so he is a partial owner of the franchise and still making good money from that investment. Then finally, they worked with Sodexo, which is a large fast-food service. They got together on a marketing agreement and created something called SodexoMAGIC. Johnson walked away by owning the majority stake also at 51 percent. So, it’s safe to say that his enterprise has helped him pick up more than enough of his wealth and still has a lot of room left to grow.
NBA Career
Nowadays, the amount of money he was able to earn in the NBA won’t seem like a lot. Especially considering that players like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Steph Curry are totaling over $200 million each. However, Johnson was making quite a large amount considering the decade he was playing in. When he first made the league, he signed a five-year, $2.3 million dollar deal with the Los Angeles Lakers. It was basically his rookie contract as we have nowadays. When that deal was able to conclude, the Lakers knew that they didn’t want to get rid of their superstar point guard. That was when he was linked to a massive 25-year, $25 million dollar contract. It was also reported that all $25 million of that money was guaranteed at signing. Though he wound up making more than just $1 million per season when he was playing due to incentives and other things like that. The Lakers certainly didn’t want to lose out on him in free agency. The contract went far beyond the years that he was actually playing in the league, yet he continued to earn his salary each season. By the time the deal ran out, Magic Johnson had made a total of $39 million across 31 seasons of basketball. He did so by only playing about half that many seasons as well. I’d say that this was quite the success for him.
Shoe Deal
Now, even though Magic Johnson made a good chunk of money from his shoe deal, he left billions on the table after declining another one. He was first approached by Converse and Nike. Nike had offered him stocks instead of money on their initial contract and Johnson opted to instead go with Converse. With the stocks that he was being presented with, nowadays it has been estimated that he could have made somewhere around $5 billion with those stocks. However, he decided to turn it down because he admitted that he didn’t know anything about stocks at the time. Nevertheless, he didn’t have any deal. He was signed on with Converse and was receiving around $2 million annually. He stayed with them for 13 years before dropping them in 1992. He even said, “Converse as a company is stuck in the 60s and 70s. They think the Chuck Taylor days are still here. I’ve never really been happy with them. Nike and Reebok pour money into advertising; I’ve been trying to get out for years.” Johnson has also admitted that turning down the Nike deal to this day is something that he always regrets. Especially because the whole situation with Converse didn’t go well with him. He’d definitely have his net worth over a billion with that Nike contract, but he’s still found a way to be close to that mark even without it.