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At over seven feet tall with an eight-foot wingspan, 20-year-old Victor Wembanyama is not your average NBA rookie. As a center on the San Antonio Spurs, Wembanyama’s fluidity and defensive prowess are already on full display. But his game isn’t the only thing that sets Wemby, as his fans call him, apart. Bloomberg’s sports business reporter Randall Williams crunched the numbers, and found that Wembanyama is on track to earn $1 billion from basketball contracts by the time he’s 33. It would make him the first professional basketball player to reach billionaire status just from playing the game.

As Wembanyama considers new brand partnerships and the NBA negotiates new media deals, he could make his billion even sooner – unless an injury sets him back. With rare skills and this rare opportunity, Wemby just might make basketball history.

Read more:  Victor Wembanyama Sets Course to Become a Basketball Billionaire Unlike Any Other

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Here is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation:

TNT: Wembanyama, oh, goes back and puts it down! Are you kidding me? Come on! Unicorn! Stop it! Stop this!

ESPN:  He held it out there so high, yes. See if you can, just like when you have the pro players and they hold their basketball camps and they're just toying with the little kids…

Sarah Holder: Even for long-time observers, there is something unique about what they are witnessing this season in the NBA. Sports commentators can barely contain their excitement.

20-year old Victor Wembanyama has big time potential. The French basketball phenom has quickly made his mark on the NBA, and when you watch his combination of size, skill and athleticism it’s clear he is a sensational talent. And all that talent translates to big money. Wemby, as he is known to fans, is on a trajectory that could lead him to be the first professional basketball player to earn $1 billion on the court. And earning all this money, just from playing the game, is a big deal. While several other basketball players have hit this figure through off-court ventures like endorsements and investments,Wemby could be the first to do it on the hardwood. 

When you talk to him about all this hype, as Bloomberg’s Randall Williams recently did, it’s clear he knows he’s got his work cut out for him:

Randall: When did you realize you’d made it?

Victor Wembanyama:  Have I made it? I’m not sure…

Sarah Holder: Today on the show: we’ll look at how Wemby could become the NBA’s first on-court billionaire and what makes him so unique both on and off the court. I'm your host Sarah Holder… and this is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. 

Sarah Holder: Randall Williams is a Sports Business Reporter here at Bloomberg, and he covers a lot of leagues.

Randall Williams: NFL, NBA, MLB, WNBA, NWSL, and so many other leagues that are popping up, and it's really fun. 

Sarah Holder: Randall is a basketball fan, so he jumped at the chance to interview Victor Wembanyama. Now one thing lots of people know about Wembanyama is how tall he is, but Randall says there is a difference between knowing how tall he is and feeling it when you are standing next to him. 

Randall Williams: People don’t realize what 7’4”, 7’5” looks like until they're standing next to it. Or until they're watching someone 6'10 look small next to a 7'5... 

Sarah Holder: And you've had the rare chance to stand next to him…

Randall Williams: Yeah, I'm not 6’10”, I'm 5’10”, so imagine someone much, much smaller standing next to Victor Wembanyama. And like, the height thing is one thing. His —the palm of his hand might be longer than my hand itself. And that’s ridiculous.

Sarah Holder: And Randall did not mince words on how much potential he sees in the young Frenchman.

Randall Wiliams: I think he could potentially be the biggest international superstar ever. 

Sarah Holder: Can you describe his game a little?

Randall Williams:  I would say his game resembles Kevin Durant a little bit. That’s who he modeled his game after. He even wore Kevin Durant shoes growing up. On defense, he’s like Rudy Gobert.

Sarah Holder: For non fans, those are arguably the most dominant offensive and defensive players in the league today at their respective positions. If Wemby fulfills that promise, he will be very well compensated. 

Sarah Holder: Wemby stands to earn a billion dollars by age 33.  Let us know, how does the math work?

Randall Williams: So, he has a $55 million contract right now. And, you know, that deal is going to go for, I believe, 4 years. When he gets to the 3rd or 4th year, the Spurs are going to offer him whatever that rookie extension — Bloomberg, I think our estimates have $316 million — it could be more than that, it could be less than that, but it’s going to be in the $300 million range. And so when that extension runs out, he'll be likely offered another one, which will be a supermax. 

Sarah Holder:  So what exactly is a supermax deal?

Randall Williams:  How you become eligible for a supermax is if you win a postseason award: so an NBA MVP, a Most Improved Player, something like that, or you make an All-NBA team, and there’s three of those. I think that Wemby is very likely to get one of them especially as some of these, these — they're not older, but the guys who are dominating the NBA right now — they age. 

Sarah Holder: And Wemby is only 20 years old  — so he’s got years of playing ahead of him.

Randall Williams:  When you look at that trajectory of his career, the level that he’s playing for the Spurs, I would estimate that he's going to be offered a supermax. That supermax could very well be over 500 million, which will take him to 800 or 900 million dollars in earnings. The one after that is pretty much the same, qualifications. So I think it's very likely that he's going to earn a billion dollars in on-court earnings and God knows what he's gonna earn off.  

Sarah Holder: Now, Randall points out that all of this earning is contingent on nothing happening to Wemby. That he:

Randall Williams: A, doesn't get in trouble; and B, doesn't have a catastrophic injury, God forbid...

Sarah Holder: And, taller players like him do tend to have a higher rate of injuries. But part of what sets Wemby apart is his unique training regimen that focuses on flexibility.

Randall Williams: Based on what I’ve spoken to him about and even watching him warm up, he is insanely flexible. There was a moment a couple weeks ago where he sprained — he like, his ankle did something that it was not supposed to do. It was like, 90 degrees to the ground and he played. 

Sarah Holder: So, a worst-case scenario would be an injury. There are also best-case scenarios in which Wemby stands to earn that billion even sooner. Like, if the NBA raises its salary cap and starts paying players more:

Randall Williams:  What's happening right now in the NBA is the NBA’s media deals are being negotiated. And the last time the NBA’s media deal was negotiated, the salary cap jumped 30%, which is huge. It really just set up the NBA’s players to earn a lot more. Well, this new media deal is going to triple the last one, meaning the salary cap is jumping up again. And so anyone who’s watched Wemby realizes that this guy is really a phenom. If he just stays healthy, he’s going to be something we've never seen.

Sarah Holder:  So that’s how much Wemby stands to make on the court. After the break, we'll talk about the kind of deals that await him off the court. 

Sarah Holder: For a young star like Wemby, there are no shortage of suitors that want him to endorse their products and brands. But so far, Wemby has been very selective in what products he chooses to get behind.

For example, while he reportedly had a lucrative offer from Gatorade, Randall says he chose to invest in a smaller, newer sports drink brand he felt was more aligned with his values. It's called Barcode:

Randall Williams: So, Barcode is a plant based drink founded by Mubarak Malik. They call him Bar. And Bar flew to Paris to meet Wemby and his family. And when he gets there, Wemby's mother, who’s a nutritionist, and a massage therapist, I believe; she sits down and she’s looking at the ingredients within the Barcode bottle. And she's like, “Oh, wow. Like, these are some of the things that I gave him as a child.” And that was a big turning point.

Sarah Holder: And Randall says Wemby didn't just do the deal with Barcode because of what the brand represents, but also because they had a unique offering for him. Instead of just a big payday up-front, they gave him an opportunity to invest in the brand. 

And investing in brands is something Wemby has watched some other huge names in the game do. He told Randall about who he looked up to most:  

Victor Wembanyama:  Kobe, LeBron, Jordan, and um, yeah, Magic Johnson. 

Sarah Holder:  These aren’t just four of the NBA’s greatest basketball talents. Lebron James, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson all have net worths north of $1 billion. The late Kobe Bryant’s estate is well on its way to eclipsing that number as well. And a lot of their money was made through investments in sports franchises, fast food chains and entertainment deals. Randall sees Wemby’s Barcode investment as a step in that same direction: 

Randall Williams: So I think that this resembles Kobe Bryant and BodyArmor in some ways. Kobe invested in BodyArmor much later in his career, but it netted him $400 million. And so, Wemby could do the exact same thing if Barcode continues to grow.

Sarah Holder: And as for his next move, Wemby says he’s just beginning to figure out what his investing game could look like: 

Victor Wembanyama:  I’m just a — I’m a rookie in the NBA, but I’m also a rookie in the game of investment. So far we’re pretty calm, but someday we're going to step in big...

Sarah Holder: And Wemby isn’t just thinking about how to amass a bunch of money — he’s also thinking about how he’ll spend that money. He sees using his earnings on causes he believes in as another way to express his identity. Here’s Randall again:

Randall Williams:  Another big surprise in the interview, which was him saying that he wants to build wells and just provide clean water to third world countries. And one of the things that he was looking at was like Mr. Beast, who’s a YouTuber, who was doing some similar things in the continent of Africa. And so I think when he gets more money, when he starts earning a lot more, that's going to be at the top of his to-do list.

Sarah Holder:  We will be watching this season, and hopefully for years to come, to see whether Wemby joins the ranks of the NBA’s all-time greats — and whether he manages to become a billionaire in the process.

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