“Image is everything,” a shaggy-haired Andre Agassi proclaimed as he hawked Canon cameras as a teenager.
Over the next 20 years, the tennis superstar traded handsomely on his world-famous name and image, earning an estimated $200 million through deals with Nike, Adidas, Head, Genworth Financial, Aramis and American Express, among others.
By 2004, Agassi had reached the No. 7 spot on the Forbes magazine list of the world’s 50 highest paid athletes. He capped off his celebrated tennis career earlier this year when Alfred A. Knopf paid $5 million for rights to his life story, earning him admission into the elite and handsomely paid memoir-writing club that includes Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Alan Greenspan and Jack Welch.
Just as his tennis game matured with age, Agassi’s approach to business grew up over the years. Once content to sell other people’s products, Agassi developed an ambitious vision of an entrepreneurial future beyond tennis. He summed up his business philosophy in a July 2007 interview with Bloomberg News: “I’m 15 years removed from sticking my name to stuff. I want to be a partner, not a spokesperson.”
Agassi, now 37, is doing just that. He and his wife, German tennis great Steffi Graf, preside over a rapidly expanding business empire that includes real estate, restaurants, night clubs, fitness centers and philanthropy. Shortly after his retirement in 2006, Agassi announced his most ambitious project: the Fairmont Tamarack, a $600-million investment on a 225-room condo-hotel property in Idaho that The New York Times calls a “resort for the 21st century.” The company sold 124 units at the initial offering in March 2007. Prices range from $700,000 to more than $5 million.
Agassi’s transformation from tennis bad boy into beloved champion and business tycoon has been a remarkable one. He turned professional at 16 and initially seemed to be more flash than substance, but eventually reached the world’s top ranking in 1995, won an Olympic gold medal and achieved what only five other men in the sport have done — win all four majors.
Tennis was Agassi’s day job, but he also became a successful part-time entrepreneur. He and his close advisers, including childhood friend and manager Perry Rogers, invested in banks, casinos, fitness centers and restaurants. In 2002, Agassi partnered with renowned chef Michael Mina to open “concept” restaurants in San Francisco, San Jose, Dana Point, Atlantic City and Las Vegas, including at the MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay and Bellagio.
Not all his ventures succeeded: He partnered with hockey great Wayne Gretzky and Super Bowl quarterback Joe Montana, in the failed Official All Star Cafe, opened by Planet Hollywood creator Robert Earl in 1995. More typical were such lucrative deals as the sale of two Golden Nugget casinos to Landry’s Restaurants Inc. for a $24-million profit and his role in the creation of Pure, the posh Las Vegas night spot named by E! as the hottest club in the country. (”The place absolutely prints money,” Rogers boasted to Bloomberg.)
A month before his final appearance at the 2006 U.S. Open, Agassi met with AOL co-founder Steve Case, now with Exclusive Resorts, which operates luxury vacation homes for a one-time fee of as much as $425,000 and additional annual dues of up to $27,500. Agassi had been a member of Exclusive Resorts and as Agassi Graf Development LLC, has signed on with Case in a 650-acre, $800-million development in Cacique, Costa Rica, scheduled to open in 2010. Agassi and Graf will design the fitness and tennis centers.
In Graf, Agassi has a partner who eclipsed his achievements on court but shares his business ideals off. Graf turned professional at 13 and held the number one ranking for 377 weeks, a record for any male or female player since rankings began. She won 107 singles titles, including 22 Grand Slams, and an Olympic gold; was named the greatest female tennis player of the 20th century in 1999; and in 2004 was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
Graf’s prize money totals almost $22 million over her 17-year career and, like Agassi, she continues to earn from endorsing Adidas, Head, Barilla (the Italian pasta maker), Mrs. Sporty (a European health and fitness chain) and Teekanne (a tea company).
The couple also has partnered with manufacturer Kreiss to create a line of high-end furniture. More recently the two have been featured in Louis Vuitton ads, along with former Soviet Union head Michael Gorbachev.
But all along their tennis and business careers, Agassi and Graf have been committed to philanthropy. The Andre Agassi Charitable Foundation has supported more than 20 organizations in southern Nevada for at-risk children and has raised more than $60 million since it was founded in 1994. Agassi funds the foundation’s operating costs and has given $20 million of his own money. Among its board members are Elton John, celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse and award-winning songwriter David Foster.
“There’s not a deal I have — not a partnership or endorsement deal, not an investment deal, not a facet of my business — where the foundation isn’t tied directly in,” Agassi told The Chronicle of Philanthropy. “I look at it real simple: If I’m going to be in with a company, they better care about the fabric of my foundation’s future — or else I have no interest in them.”
Graf’s Germany-based foundation, Children for Tomorrow, provides psychological counseling for displaced children from war-torn countries. It has projects in South Africa, Kosovo, Hamburg, Eritrea and Mozambique.
“When you win on the tennis court, you win,” Agassi told the Chronicle. “When you put hope in a child’s eyes, the world wins.”