Olympian Shaun White was shocked when he first earned $1 million as a bona fide professional athlete.
“I was so baffled by it. I was probably 14 [and] I had signed my first deal that was north of $1 million,” White, 38, recalled on the Tuesday, July 15, episode of the SoFi “Richer Lives” podcast. “I was like, ‘OK, so that’s good.’ I’d heard that number in kid moves, but I never really assumed it was something coming my way.”
He continued, “I remember it being, like, not a big deal to me. I don’t know why. I remember being like, ‘OK, that’s great. So, off to the skate park then.’”
White started skateboarding professionally when he was a teenager. (White notably later found success in snowboarding, as well.)
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“You can win competitions, so there’s prize money there,” White said of his income. “Then, you would basically do endorsement deals. I quickly learned that I wouldn’t set myself up for the future by just winning competitions. You could really do well, and many were, but you needed to have sponsorships to pay the bills and to set yourself up for the future.”
White would also be able to earn money through “photo incentives” with his brand partners.
“Say I have, like, three sponsors [and] each one of those sponsors would have a certain rate for the photo incentive,” White said. “If I was pictured in a magazine, you could clip your photo of that magazine, and you would mail it in. If I had had a page in a magazine, that was worth like $500. If I had a small mention, that was worth $100 [and] a full cover was $1,000.”
White further revealed that competition prizes only amounted to “15 percent” of his total earnings, while sponsored deals made up the rest.
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“Most of the money I made was endorsement deals within the industry and there were things outside of that industry, as well,” he said. “I had a big deal with a drink company or PlayStation. I started to do some things when I was older, where I was like, ‘Look, I’m flying all the way here to do this competition,’ so I started asking some of my sponsors to match my prize money, which helped things escalate.”
Once White’s earnings started adding up, he began splurging on luxurious goods.
“I was buying Lamborghinis. I bought this new house. I had long hair, [and] I was really feeling myself,” he quipped. “It was until, probably, my second Olympics [in] 2010 that I really started to get a grasp of what was going on. I was like, ‘OK, it’s time to figure it out.’”
White, who even turned down a handful of seven-figure paydays to keep his integrity in the sport, ultimately retired in 2022 and went on to launch several businesses of his own.
“I think my dream was just to be comfortable and take care of my family,” he stressed on Tuesday. “That was really the biggest goal I had in mind.”
