It’s In a Name - How much is an athlete worth?

These days Forbes again published sport’s top earning athletes. In spite of his transgressions, Tiger Woods still leads the pack with $64 million, followed by soccer player David Beckham ($18 million), tennis star Roger Federer ($16 million), Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt ($14 million) and basket ball players LeBron James ($13 million) and Kobe Bryant ($12 million).
I was curious to see if Web buzz and valuation of a player's attractiveness for corporate marketing executives from Nike, Addidas, Reebook and the like had any correlation. The two pictures below show the Web buzz share of five of the six athletes (I skipped the Nascar driver):

And the blog buzz share:

As the pictures show, the ranking at the top corresponds nicely. Tiger Woods is lonely at the top both on the Web and on blogs, but then there are some interesting differences. Kobe Bryant has more than his share on Web buzz compared to what corporate marketers paid for him, which means they got a good deal considering his high Web popularity. David Beckham, on the other hand, seems somewhat overpriced considering that he commands only 16% Blog and 20% Web buzz, well behind Roger Federer’s 21% and 25%. The conclusion: invest into the Swiss, he seems on the rise right now, at least as far as Web and Blog buzz goes.

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