10 Super Star Athletes Who Are Brands

“Anyone who follows me on Twitter or Instagram, they know they’re not going to see tons of ads and not a whole lot of product placement,” Watt said. “I don’t operate like that. I’m not going to have some paid ad. It’s all going to be organic.”

These posts can also bring in quite a bit of money. Izea’s Murphy said midtier athletes can bring in tens of thousands of dollars for a single post. High-profile stars can command six figures.

Last April, Watt announced his deal with Reebok by completing a 5 feet 1 inch box jump using the company’s ZPump Fusion shoes — and filming it and putting it on his social media feeds. Watt has 1.8 million followers on Instagram, and just shy of 1.6 million followers on Twitter.

The Reebok post got more than 68,000 likes on Instagram and more than 926,000 views on YouTube.

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