From LeBron James to Donald Trump, here’s what you should know about Forbes’ billionaires list
It would be an understatement to say that 2022 was a turbulent year for the world’s richest people, and Forbes’ recently unveiled ranking of the world’s billionaires in 2023 shows that they paid a heavy price for the scandal.
Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and disgraced crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried were riding high a year ago as some of the world’s richest people. Since then, their fortunes have fallen, according to the Forbes list, along with most crypto billionaires. While Musk lost the title of richest person in the world, Bankman-Fried fell off the list altogether, and Adani dropped from No. 11 to No. 24, it was a banner year for the 12 new sports billionaires who joined the ranks, including basketball player LeBron James, golf champion Tiger Woods and former motorsport racer Toto Wolff, who is now part owner of the Formula 1 team Mercedes-AMG Petronas.
It is noteworthy that two active athletes – James and Woods – have reached billionaire status. In the past, if sports stars became billionaires at all, it was usually after they had retired. (See: Michael Jordan.) It talks about how a growing number of athletes are “more savvy about investing money, taking stock in companies, expanding their brands,” said Chase Peterson-Withorn, Forbes senior wealth editor. James has a number of real estate and business investments, including in Fenway Sports Group (which owns the Boston Red Sox), while Woods has brought in money from brand endorsement deals and investments in golf-related companies.
But the most unexpected addition to the billionaire rankings in 2023? Probably singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett. “Jimmy Buffett is kind of a similar example to LeBron or Tiger Woods — that’s someone who’s made a serious amount of money over the years touring and doing things like that and has invested it wisely,” Peterson-Withorn said . His most famous song, “Margaritaville,” is among the most profitable songs of all time; it has been spun off into a multi-billion dollar hospitality chain that has expanded into new locations in recent years.
In all, according to Forbes, there are 2,640 billionaires in the world – 28 fewer than last year – and they are $500 billion poorer than in 2022. Tech billionaires suffered a second year of major blows, losing a total of about $200 billion .
Musk, who was the world’s richest man this time last year (before he made his ill-fated $44 billion bid to buy Twitter), was worth about $219 billion in early 2022. His fortune, like many tech billionaires, exploded between 2019 and 2020, and he remains the only person to break $300 billion. But the pandemonium of Musk’s Twitter acquisition, and the string of funny decisions he’s made since taking over, took a toll on his public image and the share price of Tesla, which makes up the bulk of Musk’s wealth. He was dethroned as the world’s richest person by luxury goods billionaire Bernard Arnault, CEO of Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and today Forbes estimates Musk to be worth a modest $180 billion. Indian billionaire Adani, formerly the richest person in Asia, meanwhile, was worth $90 billion on last year’s list; his fortune has fallen to $47.2 billion after a US investment firm published a report accusing the Adani Group conglomerate of fraud.
Even Jeff Bezos, who announced last fall that he aimed to give away most of his fortune, lost $57 billion in a year and is now worth $114 billion. “He’s more down-to-earth than anyone in the world,” Peterson-Withorn said. Former President Donald Trump is also down $700 million after his social media company Truth Social struggled to gain users. (There’s no telling what effect his recent 34-felony indictment will have on his wealth.)
A few scandal-ridden billionaires dropped off the list entirely, including former FTX CEO Bankman-Fried, who has been charged with fraud and money laundering, among other charges, amid accusations that he misappropriated billions of dollars from his crypto exchange clients. Ye is also no longer a billionaire, according to Forbes, after Adidas cut ties with him in response to a series of anti-Semitic comments the rapper made last year; the deal had accounted for about $1.5 billion of Ye’s net worth. (Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard has also disappeared from the Forbes rankings, but by choice; he gave away his company to a non-profit foundation last year.)
Crypto billionaires in general took a big hit as they weathered a brutal decline in crypto prices and increased regulatory scrutiny of companies. Last year, Forbes identified 19 crypto and blockchain billionaires; there are nine left in 2023, and all are poorer than they were last year. Brian Armstrong, CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase, has seen his fortune shrink by about two-thirds; Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the founders of controversial crypto exchange Gemini, are each worth about $1.2 billion now, just a quarter of their net worth last year.
“It’s relatively rare for billionaires to have two down years in a row,” Peterson-Withorn noted. “A big takeaway is just that they are not completely immune to the effects of rising interest rates and fears of recession.” Yet the world’s billionaires collectively remain immensely powerful, controlling around $12.2 trillion.
Most of the dozen new sports billionaires are sports team owners, such as Woody Johnson, co-owner of the New York Jets football team. Sports teams are more valuable than ever; The Denver Broncos sold (to Walmart heir and billionaire Rob Walton) for a record $4.65 billion last year. “Athletes are making more than ever, teams are selling for more than ever,” Peterson-Withorn said. Media rights deals are also more lucrative than ever, and the nascent online sports betting boom promises even bigger payouts in the near future.
Billionaires in the luxury goods sector are also enjoying a boom. In addition to Arnault, who is now worth $211 billion, the Bettencourt-Meyerses (owners of cosmetics giant L’Oréal), the Wertheimers (Chanel) and Giorgio Armani have all seen their fortunes grow in the past year. Frances Bettencourt-Meyers is currently the richest woman in the world. Luxury fashion tends to be resilient during inflationary and recessionary anxieties—after all, its affluent clientele can afford to spend big even while others are facing (and dreading) a cost-of-living crisis. LVMH reported a record profit of 14 billion euros (about $15.3 billion) in 2022. “There’s good money to be made selling expensive things to people who already have a lot of money,” Peterson-Withorn said.
Forbes’ annual count of billionaires began in 1987. In its first year, the magazine identified 140 billionaires worldwide, and 44 of them were American. Since then, the number of billionaires worldwide has skyrocketed. Of the 2,640 in 2023, 735 are American.
Being on the list has become something of a status symbol for some billionaires. Although some resent the publicity, “I know there are at least a select few billionaires who care very much about where they are on the list and don’t want to drop,” Peterson-Withorn said.
For some, however, the Forbes 2023 ranking paints a frightening picture of wealth inequality around the world. Morris Pearl, head of the progressive tax reform group Patriotic Millionaires, told Vox in an email that the list was “an annual exercise to remind us how much inequality we have in our society. The enormous accumulation of wealth by a few hundred people while so many are barely getting by – and some really aren’t – is unsustainable.”
