Shohei Ohtani signed the largest contract in sports history — $700 million with the Los Angeles Dodgers — but for now he collects just $2 million a year in salary, with the rest deferred until 2034. And yet, according to Jeff Passan and confirmed by Sportico, Ohtani is projected to earn $125 million in sponsorships, endorsements and licensing deals in 2026 alone — more than any active athlete in professional sports, regardless of sport.
The number nobody saw coming: $125 million off the field
Passan put it plainly in his report: «Personally, with all of the advertisements, sponsorships, and stuff like that, it’s upward of $100 million.» That figure covers 2025. For 2026, Sportico projects it reaches $125 million, factoring in known contracts and market estimates.
To put that in perspective: the all-time record for athlete sponsorship earnings belonged to Tiger Woods, who pulled in $105 million in 2009. Ohtani matched that mark in 2025 and surpasses it in 2026. Before Ohtani arrived, the MLB ceiling hovered around $10 million — a figure shared by Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki. Ohtani didn’t just break that record. He multiplied it by twelve.
And the gap keeps widening. According to Sportico, Ohtani’s projected $125 million for 2026 exceeds the combined total of the other 14 players in MLB’s top-15 sponsorship earners by $79 million. No one in baseball is even close.
The Ohtani effect on the Dodgers: how a team hits $1 billion
The Dodgers closed the 2025 season as the first franchise in MLB history — and only the fourth sports organization in the world — to surpass $1 billion in annual gross revenue. The other three: the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. It’s a very short list, and the Dodgers just joined it.
Sportico estimates Ohtani’s arrival generated roughly $200 million in additional revenue for the franchise. SponsorUnited calculated that in 2024 alone, the Ohtani effect produced $70 million in incremental sponsorship dollars for the team, driven by a wave of Japanese brands that had no previous MLB presence: All Nippon Airways, Daiso, Kosé, Kowa, Toyo Tires and Yakult, among others.
That said, the $1 billion milestone isn’t Ohtani’s doing alone. The Dodgers’ local TV deal, the Guggenheim ownership group’s management, a debt-free stadium and two recent World Series titles all factor in. Ohtani was the accelerant — not the only ingredient.
The franchise’s value was estimated at $6.9 billion in 2025 by Statista and Forbes, nearly doubling in just a few years — more than most European soccer clubs.
20-plus sponsors and a Fortnite skin: a commercial model baseball had never seen
Ohtani’s sponsor portfolio includes more than 20 brands split roughly evenly between American and Japanese companies:
- New Balance, Hugo Boss, Beats, Epic Games (U.S. side)
- Seiko, JAL, Kirin, Kowa (Japan side)
Nearly all of them use him globally, which means every activation is effectively a two-market campaign running simultaneously. He’s also the first MLB player to appear as a playable skin in Fortnite, the Epic Games title with hundreds of millions of users worldwide. That kind of pop-culture footprint is exactly what brands pay a premium for — and almost no baseball player has ever achieved it.
Only four active athletes in history have topped $100 million in sponsorship income in a single year: Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, Stephen Curry — and now Ohtani. Three of them come from sports with decades of global reach. Ohtani did it from baseball, on a $2 million annual salary, speaking a different language, in a market that until recently wasn’t paying much attention.
