The Ferrari driver ranked ninth overall on SportsPro’s 17th annual 50 Most Marketable Athletes list, published on 27 October. The top 10 otherwise spans tennis, basketball, winter sports and football, with Chinese skier Eileen Gu in second and NBA forward Giannis Antetokounmpo third.

Leclerc was the only motorsport name in the top 10. Lewis Hamilton came in 22nd and four-time world champion Max Verstappen 48th, according to BlackBook Motorsport.

Leclerc’s score of 71.12 out of 100 was weighted heavily towards brand equity, where he collected 39.68 of a possible 45 points. He added 19.85 for momentum and 11.59 for commercial trajectory. Hamilton’s total came in at 66.63 and Verstappen’s at 60.45.

A $50m commercial footprint

The 29-year-old Monegasque is estimated to have earned around $50 million in 2025 across salary, bonus and endorsement deals, BlackBook reported. His personal partnerships include Richard Mille, VistaJet, APM Monaco, L’Oreal Paris, Eight Sleep and Chivas Regal, a roster tilted firmly towards luxury and lifestyle categories.

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That tilt matters inside the SportsPro model, which rewards not just accumulated fame but the trajectory a brand is still on. The 2026 top 10 skews notably young: Alysa Liu (21), AJ Dybantsa (19), Victor Wembanyama (22), Eileen Gu (23) and Carlos Alcaraz (23) all sit alongside Leclerc, who at 29 is one of the older names in the elite group.

Three pillars, 247 athletes

SportsPro and NorthStar Solutions Group assessed 247 athletes in depth, scoring each on three pillars: brand equity (45 points), momentum (40 points) and commercial trajectory (15 points). The methodology draws on 27 marketability drivers per athlete and hundreds of data points sourced from third-party providers.

“An athlete’s marketability reflects the strength of their brand, the momentum behind it and the opportunities to translate that into commercial value,” NorthStar founder and chief executive Chris Collins told BlackBook Motorsport.

According to SportsPro, Sabalenka was the only athlete on the 2026 list to score above 70 per cent on all three pillars.

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It is Leclerc’s second time topping the motorsport category, following a first appearance on the list in 2019, his debut season as a Ferrari race driver.

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