Rafael Nadal, The Businessman
We talked about Roger Federer in the last article of this series. You can read that here. Let’s talk about his longtime on-court rival and friend, Rafael Nadal, today. This guy is known as one of the most resilient and aggressive players in tennis. And that has served him well, he’s behind only Novak Djokovic (23) in terms of career Grand Slams with 22 titles. He’s known as the “King of Clay”, owing to his unbelievable record on clay courts.
Watch Rafa at his best on the court here.
Now let’s come to the topic we’re interested in, the finances.
Nadal has won a total of 92 titles during his career, earning more than $130 million in prize money, according to the ATP. Along with this, he has numerous commercial agreements with brands including Nike, Babolat, Richard Mille and Kia, earning him more than $10 million a year.
The Spaniard, who has investments in numerous companies, earned $12.35 million in 2021 through his holding company Aspemir, according to the company’s latest accounts presented to the Mercantile Registry. Through Aspemir, Nadal controls 20 companies.
The main company that Aspemir controls is the Centre Esportiu Manacor, located in Nadal’s hometown in Mallorca, where it owns and operates the sports facilities and accommodations linked to the Rafa Nadal Academy. In 2016 he opened this high-performance school, which is considered to be one of the world’s leading sports centres.
The tennis star is also one of the investors of the Mabel Capital Group together with Abel Matutes Prats and Manuel Campos. One of the most prestigious projects of the group has been the Villa de París, which consists of 11 luxury homes in the heart of Madrid.
Rafael Nadal is also a member of the Tatel group along with other celebrities such as Pau Gasol, Enrique Iglesias and Cristiano Ronaldo. After the success of its restaurants in Madrid and Ibiza, Tatel opened its new establishment in the heart of Beverly Hill and plans were to expand into Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) and Bahrain too. The tennis player also has significant investments in the tourist sector, mainly in the Mexican Caribbean. He was the promoter on the island of Cozumel of two hotel complexes, Secrets Aura and Sunscape Sabor, which together have nearly 500 rooms.
He has also worked as a producer on a number of Netflix series. And in February 2021, he even entered into the world of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), through ‘Autograph’, the platform launched by the NFL player, Tom Brady, in which other sports stars such as Serena Williams and Usain Bolt were also involved.
All of these ventures, along with his considerable earnings from his own sport, have put his net worth somewhere north of $200 million. He has consistently dabbled into ventures outside of his own field, by having people around him that know what they are doing. So we don’t have to know everything ourselves, we just have to find people who have the same goal as us and who can complement our skills and counter our weaknesses.
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