Who's The Tennis Investment GOAT?

Federer, Nadal, Djokovic... all great on the court, but it's off it that numbers really talk.

We’re happy to announce that we’ve partnered with Kensington Tennis Club in London, starting this month. For our subscribers based in town, please contact us as we have a host of perks we can offer, from event access to discounted coaching.

Given the new deal, we thought it appropriate to look into the sport a bit deeper, but with our investment hats on.

The top three players in the conversation for being the greatest of all time (GOAT) are Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. On court, here’s the breakdown of stats:

However, what about their investment performance?

Rafael Nadal

Nadal operates most of his investment activity through his company Aspemir. In the latest published accounts, the net worth of the holdings was €229m. This doesn’t include his on-court deals, such as a $10m per year Nike sponsorship. Within the business, he has stakes in 20 companies, with some notable ones mentioned below:

Centre Esportiu Manacor

This is Nadal’s tennis academy, based in Mallorca. The sprawling complex with accommodation and multi-sport facilities costs athletes €57,000 a year to come to. This helped the academy to post a profit of €2.3m last year.

Mabel Capital

Nadal also invest heavily from his holding company into Mabel, which it owns a 33% stake in. Mabel invests mostly in high-end real estate in Europe, such as a 12 apartment site in Madrid’s most exclusive neighbourhood shown below. This site alone is estimated to be valued at €70m.

Novak Djokovic

Novak runs his investments through his company Family Sport. In a similar way to Nadal, in Belgrade Novak has his own tennis academy, which it runs for a profit.

DjokoLife + Restaurants

Given his passion for health, it’s not unsurprising that he has business interests in catering and restaurants.

For several years this included DjokoLife, his own range of healthy products. This was wound down recently though, indicating to us that the numbers just didn’t stack up

What is doing better is his ownership of places such as Eqvita in Monaco and three restaurants in Serbia. Given the operations under Family Sport, we can’t assess the exact profitability of these investments directly.

QuantBioRes

Although this isn’t his largest value investment, Novak’s 80% stake in the Danish healthcare business could yield a large return in the future. Made back in 2020, the focus initially was to help find immunity against Covid-19 without the need for a vaccine.

The company posted a loss of circa $160k in the last financial year, so things aren’t paying dividends just yet.

But given Novak’s insane fitness drive and healthcare push, we wouldn’t be surprised if this company could explode higher if it can hit the lotto on a treatment.

Roger Federer

On Trainers

Perhaps Federer’s most high profile investment came with On Trainers. Back in 2019, he agreed to make a tennis shoe with the Swiss sneaker brand, which at that stage was a private limited company. As part of the deal, Roger bought a 3% stake in the business. The exact amount he paid for the stock is a tight secret.

However, the business did go public in 2021, with the share price up 48% over the past year.

Currently, the company has a market cap of $9.17bn, making Federer’s stake worth a cool $275m. We don’t know how much he paid to begin with, but we imagine he’s made a very healthy return on his investment.

Uniqlo

It’s true that both Novak and Rafa have lucrative sponsor deals with Nike and Lacoste, but none come close to the deal Roger penned with Uniqlo back in 2018.

He signed a 10-year deal worth $300m, but with a key clause that allows him to collect his cash as long as he wears the clothes either on or off court. This allows us to include this as an investment as it’s unrelated to his performance on court.

Given that Federer has now retired, the deal means he’ll still get paid for this partnership for years to come, even without stepping foot on a tennis court.

And the winner is…

Estimated net worths below:

1. Federer $550m

   Tied for 2nd…Nadal $220m / Djokovic $220m

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