Melbourne, Aug 7 (ANI): Usain Bolt is set to race ahead of many of his fellow Olympians with new endorsement deals after becoming the world's fastest man with back-to-back gold medals in the 100m sprint.
He is the only one after American sprinter Carl Lewis to have achieved such a feat.
"That 10 seconds is worth 2 million dollars a second, for the next 12 months easy," the Age quoted Australian celebrity agent Max Markson, as saying.
He believes the Jamaican will double his sponsorship earnings after the winning sprint in London.
The 25-year-old is already the highest-paid Olympian - outside of basketball and tennis - at this year Games with estimated earnings of 20.3 million over the past year, according to US business magazine Forbes in a report last month.
Bolt's biggest sponsor, Puma, forks out 9 million dollars annually for the track star.
But it was his 2008 triumph in Beijing that saw many other sponsors outside the field of athletics, such as watchmaker Hublot, communications company Virgin Media, car manufacturer Nissan, credit card giant Visa and Soul Electronic jump on the Bolt bandwagon, Forbes reported.
"Generally speaking the larger the audience and bigger appeal an athlete commands, the higher their commercial value and size of the endorsement deals they should expect to net," Chris Styring, the general manager of research company Sweeney Sports and Entertainment, said.
"Athletes such as Roger Federer and Usain Bolt who compete at the highest levels in sports that are easily accessible, globally broadcast on free-to-air channels and appeal to both genders will generate big off-track deals," he added. (ANI)
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