How the Forbes Athlete Ranking Actually Works
Forbes publishes its annual list of the world's highest-paid athletes every summer, usually around July. The methodology is straightforward but has some real gaps that people miss. They take total compensation from salary, bonuses, and endorsements, adjust for inflation using the CPI-U, and rank accordingly. It sounds simple until you actually try to parse the numbers for two different sports. Stephen Curry consistently appears near the top of these lists when healthy. He makes his money from both on-court production and massive endorsement deals with Under Armour. Justin Verlander, as a pitcher, has a different compensation structure that skews heavily toward his player salary rather than endorsements. That gap matters more than most readers realize.
Comparing the Stephen Curry Vs Justin Verlander Forbes Ranking
I remember working through a project where I had to cross-reference these Forbes rankings with contract details from Spotrac and Spotrac-style databases. The problem is that Forbes doesn't always break out the components clearly enough for certain athletes, especially when contract extensions get restructured with signing bonuses, roster bonuses, and incentives that don't show up as straightforward salary. Forbes tends to use a lagging approach, reporting figures that may not reflect the most recent extension unless they specifically update the entry. One edge case I ran into: Verlander's 2020 trade to Houston and subsequent contract extension created a situation where his reported "compensation" in one Forbes edition reflected the prior season's deal, while his actual earnings had shifted dramatically. The workaround was to pull his MLB.com contract data directly and calculate the prorated annual value rather than trusting the Forbes figure. This took maybe twenty minutes but saved a significant error. Curry's situation is more predictable because his Under Armour deal is public and his Warriors salary is straightforward. His ranking has hovered between roughly fourth and tenth place across recent years depending on team performance and whether he wins MVP conversations. Verlander's ranking has been more volatile, tied to pitching dominance cycles and whether his team reaches the postseason. Pitchers with Cy Young-level seasons tend to see endorsement growth, but it lags by a year or two.
The deeper issue nobody talks about is that Forbes' methodology fundamentally undervalues athletes from smaller markets or players in revenue-sharing structures where their direct contribution to team revenue isn't visible. It also tends to over-index on recognizable brand value, which means a mid-tier athlete with a Nike deal can outrank a elite performer with minimal endorsement presence. Both Curry and Verlander benefit from strong brand partnerships, so they don't hit the worst of this distortion, but it affects the margin around them. If you're trying to build your own comparison, start with Forbes' published list as a baseline, then verify the compensation breakdowns against primary sources. The process usually takes about forty-five minutes for a pair of athletes. Don't trust any single number without checking it. The rankings shift annually and older editions aren't always corrected retroactively for contract modifications.
Get the Full Details
