Conor McGregor, The Businessman
We’ve talked about a lot of sports personalities in this series, from tennis stars to cricket and football legends. Let’s shift to a player who has been a part of one of the most violent sports in the world: Conor McGregor.
The MMA star is from Ireland, and as the story goes, he only started boxing after getting bullied at the age of 12. Eventually, he came to the sport of MMA and rose through the ranks in the UFC. But it was not smooth sailing at any point for him. He worked as a plumber at age 17 to support himself along with training. Due to time constraints on his training, he quit his job and was living on welfare (a kind of government help).
After years of hardship, he got his shot with the UFC, earning $16000 for his first fight, and then quickly rose to glory: he became the first UFC fighter to win championships in two different weight classes simultaneously (as you can guess, even one is very hard) and fought legendary boxer Floyd Mayweather in 2017, an event that generated around $600 million in revenue.
If you want to look at his journey more closely, I found a YouTube video:
Now let’s come to the topic at hand, the finances.
Needless to say, McGregor has earned millions of dollars in active income, that is, in fees for his fights in the UFC. But like many of the people we discussed before, he has turned that money and network into much more money.
One major chunk of money he earned was through the sale of his majority stake in the whiskey brand “Proper No. Twelve” for $150 million reportedly. This company was formed because McGregor partnered with Ken Austin (part of Avion Tequila) to create something out of his love for whiskey. He realised the importance of having an experienced entrepreneur by his side and leveraged his reach to market the product.
McGregor also started a clothing brand with luxury custom clothier David August named “August McGregor”. They offer a range of casual and athletic wear along with suits for customers.
He also leveraged the brand he has created by launching a fitness app named “McGregor FAST” and a YouTube channel named “The Mac Life”. The channel’s content revolves around the star and events in the world of professional fighting. It has more than 1.4 million subscribers currently.
He also has a plant-based therapy company named “TIDL Sport” and a pub back in Ireland. He has had or still has endorsement deals with a number of top brands like Reebok, Burger King and Beats by Dre.
He has a lot of real estate, with properties worth millions in Ireland, Spain and the US. And he’s been seen sporting a number of uber luxury watches from brands like Rolex, Patek Phillipe and Audemars Piguet.
Conor McGregor is worth around $200 million according to most websites and he might become the first billionaire fighter out of the UFC very soon. most, if not all of his businesses would be worth millions in my opinion due to the business acumen and networking capabilities he seems to have.
I think something very important we can learn from him is to understand what you can do and not do, so that you can get people who complement your skills to go in on projects with you. No one knows it all, so you need competent and hard-working people in your corner.
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