When David Beckham — the football-mad only son of a heating engineer and a hairdresser — joined the Manchester United academy in July 1991 aged 16, he earned £29.50 per week.
From humble beginnings to running a global empire: The Sunday Times can reveal today that Sir David and his wife, Victoria, are now valued at £1.185 billion, thanks to shrewd investments across football, food and drink, property and fashion. The valuation, compiled for the annual Sunday Times Rich List, makes Beckham the first British billionaire sportsman and means the couple’s wealth has more than doubled over the past year, when they were worth £500 million.
Much of Beckham’s recent uptick in fortunes is thanks to his investment in Inter Miami CF, the Major League Soccer (MLS) team that the former England footballer bought as part of a group of investors in 2018. Beckham’s stake is now worth close to £300 million, boosted by the signing of the former Barcelona striker and World Cup winner Lionel Messi and the development of Miami Freedom Park, a 131-acre real-estate development that at present includes the Nu Stadium, a 26,700-capacity arena next to Miami international airport, and will later include retail and dining options, and office space. The real estate investment is more valuable than Beckham’s stake in the club.
Posh and Becks also own a £60 million property in Miami, a 14,270 sq ft estate complete with nine bedrooms, a spa and views of Biscayne Bay. The house — which has been extensively renovated — is located on North Bay Road, an exclusive enclave where residents have included Matt Damon and Jennifer Lopez.
The couple have invested heavily in property. Besides the Miami home, the Beckhams’ portfolio includes their £50 million, six-bedroom grade II listed home in Holland Park and a £20 million estate in Great Tew in the Cotswolds, which has its own swimming pool, a lake, beehives, a full-size football pitch and a “wild” outdoor kitchen. The couple own a £20 million yacht, Seven, which is at the time of writing moored in Ibiza.
Fashion also makes up a sizeable part of their growing empire. In a Netflix documentary last year, Victoria outlined the trials and tribulations of her eponymous fashion line, which did not turn a profit until 2022. “It was like a snowball that was going down the mountain,” she admitted in the programme. “There was a lot of waste.” The brand’s revenues have hit £100 million, helped in part by the launch of a successful cosmetics arm, with its products sold in the department stores Selfridges and Harrods. In other fashion interests, Becks launched an eyewear brand in 2020.
Investments in food and drink also make up a chunk of the couple’s business portfolio. In 2024, Beckham launched IM8, a wellness brand focused on supplements, and whose ambassadors include the women’s tennis world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka and the F1 driver Oliver Bearman. Beckham also has Beeup, a range of healthy kids’ snacks made from honey, inspired by the hives on his Cotswolds estate.
Andy Milligan, founder of the consultancy the Caffeine Partnership and author of Brand It Like Beckham, says the couple have always been astute. “They’ve always had a long-term ambitious strategy, beyond the football career for David, beyond the music career for Victoria. They had identified those areas where they were going to develop over time. But what they were also really savvy about was getting the commercial structures in place to monetise them.”
Beckham and Lionel Messi AFP
This, Milligan says, involved “building a portfolio of trademarks, data rights, image rights, then registering those with the international trademark registers early on, segmenting market by market. It might all sound very boring, but it is how you actually make money out of the ownership of the brands.”
He adds: “That’s not something that the average football player or average pop musician would have been thinking about. Understanding that was the way the world was moving, getting exceptionally good advice along the way and being really savvy enough to take it — which is what really smart people do — has been how they’ve really monetised the brand.”
The Beckhams’ net worth puts them second in the Sunday Times Rich List’s wealthiest sports figures, not far behind Bernie Ecclestone and his family (£2 billion). Although Ecclestone did have a brief racing career, it was primarily through the commercialisation of Formula 1 that he made his money and so Beckham is considered the first British billionaire sportsman.
Explore the Sunday Times Rich List 2026
In third are father-and-son sports promoters Barry and Eddie Hearn (£1.035 billion) and, in fourth, the entrepreneur Ben Francis, whose apparel brand Gymshark — which he started in his parents’ garage with a school friend — has made him a fortune of £800 million. The Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton, a seven-time F1 championship winner, is in fifth, with a net worth of £435 million.
The rest of the top ten is made up by the sportswear entrepreneurs Tom and Phil Beahon (£350 million); the golfer Rory McIlroy (£325 million); the boxers Anthony Joshua (£240 million) and Tyson Fury (£162 million) and, in joint tenth, the England captain Harry Kane — at present playing for the German club Bayern Munich — and the former tennis champion Andy Murray, who retired from the sport in 2024, and whose business interests include Cromlix, a five-star hotel and spa in Dunblane. Both Kane and Murray are worth £110 million.
Anthony Joshua has an estimated wealth of £240 millionCamera Press
Milligan says that the Beckhams have set a template for sports stars who want to extend their career past playing, and other aspiring celebrities. “I think people now understand the absolute importance of managing your persona. I am a great admirer of the Beckhams because typically what they set out to do, they achieve. It’d be very easy for anybody to say, ‘Well, I’ve got this much money, I can go and retire.’ And that’s not on their agenda. I’m sure he wants to make Inter Miami one of the greatest clubs in the world.”
He adds: “These are two people both from backgrounds where hard work was valued, who have been determined to make the most of the talents they were given.”