Alex Rodriguez’s Net Worth Has Skyrocketed Thanks to Some Savvy Business Moves

When he was just eighteen years old, Alex Rodriguez signed to The Mariners for a three-year contract worth $1.3 million, including a $1 million signing bonus. After some solid rookie years, he became a free agent after the 2000 season.

At the time, the Texas Rangers were the last-place team in their division, and that’s where A-Rod signed. He didn’t just sign any old contract either. He signed what was, at the time, the most lucrative contract in sports history. Rodriguez signed a 10-year deal worth $252 million. In today’s money, that’s roughly $375 million. It was unheard of, with the closest contract in baseball still more than $60 million away. Naturally, it did cause some controversy about where else the money could have gone for the team, but there’s no way Alex Rodriguez was complaining.

Of course, if you know much about Alex Rodriguez’s story, you know that he didn’t end up staying with the Texas Rangers for anywhere near the ten years he was signed for. In fact, in an interview he did years after he left the team, he said that he regretted signing there at all.

When he was traded to the Yankees after just three years with Texas, the Rangers agreed to pay A-Rod $67 million of the nearly $180 million left on his contract.

When his ten-year contract was up in 2007, there was a bit of controversy about whether or not Alex Rodriguez was going to stay with the New York Yankees or not. He had been saying throughout his time with the team that he would be a Yankee for life, but when the time came to re-sign, his agent said that he would not be doing so because he was unsure about the future of the team. If this was a negotiation for more money, it worked because, in a contract that was finalized in December of 2013, A-Rod signed a deal worth $275 million over ten years. It included incentives of multi-millions to break records.

When his historic deal ended a few years ago, Alex Rodriguez had been paid $317,368,852 by the Yankees over his twelve seasons with them. Even more astonishingly, the money he was supposed to receive from the Rangers was converted to an assignment bonus. The 2% interest per annum it has raked up since means A-Rod will be getting paid handsome checks from it until 2025 when he is about to turn fifty years old.

Overall, in all of his years playing baseball, Alex Rodriguez has made nearly half a billion dollars. He could have made more, too, if not for his controversies surrounding his use of performance enhancing drugs. That situation meant that his sponsors dried up, and over his career, A-Rod made only $40 million off of endorsements. Had he been without that controversy, he could have easily made triple that number. Either way, his earnings of $445,159,552 have made him easily the highest-earning MLB players of all time, with the second place going to Albert Pujos, who made about two-thirds of that.

Since his MLB career came to an end a few years ago, Alex Rodriguez has found great success in sports analysis. After a tenure with Fox Sports, he joined ESPN in 2018, where it's safe to assume that he among the company’s highest-paid talent.

Very early on in his career, A-Rod had long-term plans financially, and he founded a holding company called A-Rod Corp, where he made investments in various industries. Since his career ended, Rodriguez has made multiple huge investments, including leading a bid of investors with his wife Jennifer Lopez for the New York Mets.

In conclusion, A-Rod certainly made more than enough from his professional baseball career for him to live luxuriously. Still, instead, he has made smart business decisions that will see him nearing $1 billion in our lifetimes.