The top 10 highest-paid athletes under 25 all have one thing in common. It is not their sport.

Forbes publishes a lot of lists. The one that gets the least attention is also the most instructive: the highest-paid athletes under 25.

This year's version includes six athletes who earned a combined $384 million over 12 months. Two soccer players. Two basketball players. Two tennis players. Look at the earnings breakdown and something immediately stands out.

For every athlete at the top of this list, the money from their sport is not the point. The money from everything else is.

The numbers that matter

Carlos Alcaraz earned $61.5 million in 2026. $23.5 million came from prize money. The other $38 million came from endorsements with Louis Vuitton, Rolex, and Nike. He is 23 years old and already earns more from brand partnerships than from winning tournaments.

Jannik Sinner earned $54.6 million. $22.6 million on-court. $32 million off-court, anchored by a 10-year, $158 million Nike deal he signed in 2022 before he had even cracked the top 10 in the world rankings.

Anthony Edwards earned $69 million. $46 million from his NBA contract. $23 million from endorsements. Erling Haaland earned $80 million. $60 million from his club contract. $20 million from commercial partners.

The pattern is consistent. At 23, 24, 25, these athletes are not living off their playing contracts. They have built parallel income structures that will outlast the contract, and in some cases, already dwarf it.

Why the under-25 list matters more than the overall top 50

Most wealth analyses of athletes focus on peak earners: the Ronaldos, the LeBrons, the athletes at the absolute top of their careers. These are useful data points, but they describe outcomes, not strategy.

The under-25 list describes strategy. It shows what the athletes who will dominate the next decade are doing right now, at the beginning.

Sinner did not wait until he was ranked number one to build his commercial portfolio. Nike did not wait to see if he would win a Grand Slam before signing him. The investment in brand infrastructure happened before the peak, because the people making these decisions understood something important: the window to build a relationship with an audience is open earliest, before the peak, before the contract negotiations, before the retirement countdown starts.

Alcaraz has deals with Louis Vuitton, Rolex, and Nike at 23. He has, at a conservative estimate, another 12 to 15 years of elite competition ahead of him. Every year those brand relationships compound. He is not building a retirement fund. He is building a business that runs alongside the tennis career and will survive it.

The Caitlin Clark contrast

Caitlin Clark earned $530,000 from the WNBA in 2026. That is after a new CBA that gave her a 600% raise from her rookie contract. It is still less than the minimum salary for an NBA rookie.

Her total earnings, including endorsements with Nike, Gatorade, and State Farm, are significantly higher. She is, in that sense, following the same playbook as Alcaraz and Sinner: building off-court income that does not depend on what the league decides to pay.

But here is what the under-25 list reveals. Clark accesses that off-court income through traditional corporate sponsorship, the gatekept system that rewards athletes who have already broken through to a mainstream audience. The WNBA players below her in the rankings, the ones who draw real audiences in their markets but lack the national profile that attracts Fortune 500 sponsors, have almost no version of this available to them.

The endorsement economy at the under-25 level rewards visibility, not performance. It rewards athletes who have already broken through to a mainstream audience. The ones still building that audience, still developing the fan base that might one day attract that level of brand attention, are on their own.

What the early window actually looks like

The athletes on the Forbes under-25 list did not find brand partners by accident. Sinner signed with Nike at 20. Alcaraz built a commercial presence that matched his on-court trajectory. These were strategic decisions about when to start, not reactive moves after the wins came.

The reason the early window matters is compounding. A fan relationship built at 18 is worth more than one built at 28, because it has ten more years to deepen. A brand partnership signed before the peak costs less and lasts longer. The athletes who understand this build income structures that do not require a governing body to negotiate on their behalf.

That is the insight the Forbes under-25 list is actually showing. Not who is earning the most right now. But who started building early enough to earn differently.

The question for every athlete not on this list

The athletes on the Forbes list have agents, legal teams, and commercial infrastructure. They have leverage. Most professional athletes, at every level below this tier, do not have access to that infrastructure. They compete. They train. They build real audiences, sometimes in the hundreds of thousands, and they have no mechanism to translate that audience into income that is not controlled by a league, a federation, or a brand gatekeeper.

The window the Forbes athletes used early is not exclusive to athletes who can land Nike deals. The principle is the same: build a direct relationship with the people who follow what you do, and start before you think you need to.

That is the model Thravos is built around. Athletes at every level, across every sport, connecting directly with their fans to build income that does not depend on a contract cycle or a sponsor's call back. You can see what it looks like at thravos.io/athletes. The platform is live at app.thravos.io.

The athletes on the Forbes under-25 list figured out early that their sport was not their only asset. The question is what that realization looks like for the athletes who never make that list but spend their careers building something just as real.

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Disclaimer: This post may include forward-looking statements based on current expectations, plans, or projections. Actual results may differ due to various factors beyond our control. Readers are encouraged to conduct their own research and use independent judgment when interpreting the information provided. All content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice.