Before he completed golf’s Grand Slam, McIlroy was worth £225m (€262m) according to the Sunday Times Rich List of 2024. That already put him among the world’s richest sportspeople, the likes of Tiger Woods and Cristiano Ronaldo. Forbes says his total earnings last year were $83m, with $38m of that won on the course and the remaining $45m coming from endorsements. His sponsors include Nike, TaylorMade, NBC Sports, Bose and Omega. No one knows precisely what these top brands are paying McIlroy. Annual earnings from TaylorMade are thought to be $10m; his deal with Nike is reckoned to be worth double that. ‘It will be interesting to see what he invests in. Does he buy a football club? I think he’s in that space’ “His contracts with Nike and the others will include bonuses for winning the Masters – you’re talking seven figures,” says Trevor Twamley, chief executive of the sports-marketing platform Sport Endorse. “Also, more Omega watches will be sold, more TaylorMade golf balls, and Rory probably has royalties on all those deals. He is getting a sum per item sold. He earned $45m last year off the course, but it could be up to $100m now with his royalties.” Renewing those endorsement deals with Rory will be more expensive now, points out Jill Downey, chief sponsorship officer with Core: “I think there is more to be made, but whether Rory would want to make it is probably the key question. Or does he want to invest his time in other ways?” Deals come with duties, and while McIlroy wearing their brand on the course will be enough for most of his golf ‘partners’, others will eat into his spare time. “Brands outside of golf, where he is not naturally using their product, would definitely need him to show up in some way for them to get their money’s worth,” says Downey. “Rory doesn’t strike me as somebody who would want deals that impact his life outside of golf and that’s where a lot of these fit in – somewhere in the downtime. So I don’t see it as something he will necessarily go after.” In fact, the expectation is that McIlroy, who has a young family, may reduce the number of endorsements he does, and eventually end up with one or even none. The feeling is that he will instead concentrate on the investment company he co-founded, Symphony Ventures. Registered in 2019, the Dublin-based firm has focused its investment firepower on the sports, tech and healthcare sectors. McIlroy has become an “accomplished investor”, according to one adviser. He invested in Whoop, which produces fitness trackers, when it was valued at $1.3bn, and within a year it was worth three times more. Among the other headline investments were TickPick, a website selling event tickets; GolfPass, an online platform for booking tee times; and LetsGetChecked, an Irish medtech company that allows customers to get medical test results delivered to their doors. You could describe some of them as passion projects – such as chipping in $26m into Kaia Health, a German health company tackling back pain, which McIlroy experienced early in his career. Symphony Ventures also invested in the Formula One team Alpine Racing, along with several leading footballers and the boxer Anthony Joshua. McIlroy explained his rationale to the New York Times in 2021: “I had gotten to a point where I had done financially well on the golf course. We were looking to do something different. It was, ‘do I open another wealth management portfolio and do the same thing again? Or do I do something like this, as a great introduction to meet new people?’” McIlroy’s advisers includes some savvy operators, the likes of Ciaran Medlar, a tax partner at BDO accountancy firm, who said recently he was “going to take on a larger role with Rory, to help him with some of the management of his business, which is based here in Dublin”. There’s also Neill Hughes and Peter Crowley of FL Partners, recently appointed directors of Rory McIlroy Management Services. “He seems to have surrounded himself with really good people,” says Mick O’Keeffe, chief executive of Teneo in Ireland. “A heavyweight advisory panel is helping him. I don’t think he can put too much of a foot wrong when it comes to his investments. “For Rory now, winning is about winning, not about money. He’s not going to be in a Formula 1 car going around with a load of sponsors on him, he’s gone beyond that. It will be interesting to see what he invests in. Does he buy a football club? I think he’s in that space.” One reason why McIlroy is now one of the most marketable sports stars on the planet is because of the perseverance he showed in finally winning the Masters, and the honesty and openness of his public persona. “A lot of them are afraid to say anything, and are very sanitised. Sport needs personalities to thrive,” Downey points out. “Many people would pay to go and hear Rory talk, they would be fascinated by that. You could see Rory speaking at big global conferences in time, if he wanted to. He is box office, and few people in the world are.” As Paddy O’Dea of Finn Partners says: “It is rare that the most talented and successful on-the-field athlete is also one of the smartest, most considered and articulate off it”. McIlroy already has all the trappings of great wealth, including a $70m private jet, and at least three properties, including a $10m estate in Florida. But as Jill Downey of Core says: “He just does not strike you as someone who is really commercially hungry. If he was, he would have done the LIV tour, you’d imagine.” The breakaway organisation is financed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, and widely seen as a “sportswashing” exercise by a monarchy that has scant respect for human rights. “Rory seems to have quite a strong moral compass. He is clear on who he is,” Downey adds. “He is one of the most interesting sportspeople in the world, which is about more than being good at golf. That is where his commercial advantage lies.” Should he choose to exploit it.