Driving ambition: Pro disc golfer Paul McBeth signs unprecedented $10m deal
Paul McBeth, the world’s top-ranked disc golfer, has become the richest athlete in the sport’s history after signing a record $10m endorsement contract with Discraft to represent the manufacturer through 2031.
Stands not within the prospect of belief, you say? Think again.
“It’s mind-blowing to me to think about that 17-year-old me – or even before that, 14-year-old me – made the right move back then to put myself in this position and be able to propel the sport to potentially the next level,” McBeth said in a YouTube video announcing the blockbuster deal on Wednesday. “I feel like this is just the beginning.”
The 30-year-old, from Huntington Beach, California, is widely regarded as disc golfing’s biggest star with 130 tournament wins and $510,680 in career earnings, according to the Professional Disc Golf Association’s website.
Wednesday’s pact is an extension of an initial four-year contract that McBeth signed with the Michigan-based company ahead of the 2019 season, which was worth a guaranteed $1m in addition to royalties and a percentage of Discraft disc sales.
Discraft team manager Bob Julio described that deal as a success.
“Blew away my expectations in three months,” Julio told Ultiworld Disc Golf. “We outgrew the first deal – the four years – we outgrew that in a year, and we started discussing that we need to restructure things and make it long term, more so than four years.”
A one-time accomplished shortstop who played baseball until he was 21, McBeth took up disc golfing when he was 14 and joined the professional ranks in 2008, when he captured Male Rookie of the Year honors. He won four consecutive PDGA world titles from 2012 through 2015, then a fifth in 2019 after recovering from back ailments including a fractured vertebra.
McBeth’s banner year came in 2015, when he won 19 of 25 tournaments entered and completed the first and only calendar-year grand slam in the sport’s history by sweeping the five events then classified as major tournaments: the PDGA World Championships, the United States Disc Golf Championship, the Aussie Open, the European Masters and the European Open.
“I was playing baseball since the time I was in a crib,” McBeth told the Peoria Journal Star in 2019. “So throwing is something I was comfortable doing, something I was good at.
“My father played a little disc golf. So when I was 14, I started up with that, too. I really liked it, and then I started finding tournaments and my career was under way.”
McBeth, who can toss the disc as far as 550 feet with pinpoint accuracy, was No 1 in the PDGA’s most recent world rankings, marking the fourth time he’s finished a season atop the year-end table.
The two-time US champion was scheduled to open his 2021 campaign on Thursday at the DGPT Las Vegas Challenge, which runs through Sunday at the Wild Horse disc golf course.
The PDGA, founded in 1976, claims more than 71,000 active registered members in 40 countries across the globe. While nearly three-quarters of courses are located in the United States – 6,936 in all – the sport is also popular in Finland (707 courses), Canada (300), Sweden (218) and Estonia (146).
