Wayne Gretzky is a Canadian retired professional hockey player and entrepreneur. Wayne Gretzky net worth is $250 million. From 1979 until 1999, he was widely regarded as one of the best hockey players of all time, playing in the NHL for 20 seasons. Wayne went on to have a tremendously successful business career after retirement, which we will discuss later in this essay.
Wayne Gretzky Earnings
Wayne Gretzky earned a total of $46 million in NHL compensation throughout his NHL career. During his playing career, he earned an extra $50 million in endorsements. After adjusted for inflation, he made almost $150 million in total. He has prudently spent his money, creating an empire that includes sports club ownership, a winery, real estate enterprises, and more.
Wayne Gretzky Age: 61 YearsÂ
Wayne Gretzky Height: 1.83 m
Wayne Gretzky Net Worth: $250 million
Wayne Gretzky Spouse: Janet Jones (m. 1988)
Wayne Gretzky Nicknames: Gretz, The Great Gretzky, The Great One, The White Tornado
Wayne Gretzky Children: Paulina Gretzky, Emma Gretzky, Tristan Gretzky, Trevor Gretzky, Ty Gretzky
Wayne Gretzky Early Life
Wayne Douglas Gretzky was born on January 26, 1961, in Brantford, Ontario. He is the youngest of four siblings. His father, Walter, taught him, his brothers, and their friends how to play hockey on a handmade rink in the backyard of the family house, and Gretzky shown natural aptitude from an early age. He was already playing on a squad of 10-year-olds at the age of six, and he continued to draw attention as he grew older. His success on the ice frequently drew unfavourable attention from other players and jealous parents, and he was frequently booed during games.
His parents helped him in moving to Toronto to play hockey, in part to help him progress his profession, but also to help him escape the unpleasant climate of his birthplace. Players were not allowed to play in different areas at the time, but his parents successfully challenged the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, and he was allowed to play Junior B hockey with the Toronto Nationals. He eventually won Rookie of the Year in the Metro Junior B Hockey League for the 1975-76 season. When he was 16, he was picked in the 1977 Ontario Major Junior Hockey League draught to play for the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds.
Wayne Gretzky Professional Hockey Career
Gretzky signed a seven-year personal services deal with the Indianapolis Racers of the World Hockey Association in 1978, when he was 17 years old (WHA). He had to join the WHA instead of the NHL at first because the NHL would not allow players under the age of 20 to be signed. He only had a brief stint with the Racers before being sent to the Edmonton Oilers. After the WHA disbanded in 1979, his club entered the NHL, and he was important in bringing them to four Stanley Cup triumphs.
He won the Hart Memorial Trophy as the NHL’s Most Valuable Player in his first season with the Oilers. His star continued to rise, and he became the first player in NHL history to cross the 200-point plateau, among other accomplishments. He was moved twice more after that, and he also played for the Los Angeles Kings (1988-1996) and the St. Louis Blues (1996). In 1996, he signed a two-year, $8 million USD contract with the New York Rangers as a free agent.
He retired from the NHL in 1999 while playing for the New York Rangers. Gretzky won nine Hart Trophies for most valuable player, ten Art Ross Trophies for most points in a season, five Lester B. Pearson medals, and two Conn Smythe Trophies for postseason MVP during his career. Following his retirement, he was inducted into the NHL Hall of Fame. He retired from the NHL with 61 NHL records to his name. His #99 jersey was also retired by the league, and he was the only person to do so at the time.
Wayne Gretzky Business Ventures And Endorsements
Gretzky, in addition to being a professional player, has made significant investments in sports club ownership. He purchased the Hull Olympiques of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League for $175,000 CAD in 1985 and sold them for $550,000 CAD in 1992. When Bruce McNall bought the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League in 1991, Gretzky and John Candy became minority owners; they finally sold the franchise in 1994. He teamed up with McNall once more to buy a rare Honus Wagner T206 cigarette card for $451,000 USD, which he later sold. Gretzky is also a partner in the sports equipment company First Team Sports and the roller hockey rink operator Worldwide Roller Hockey, Inc.
Furthermore, during his professional hockey career, Gretzky received several lucrative sponsorship deals. Due to endorsement deals with big worldwide companies such as Coca-Cola, Domino’s Pizza, Sharp Corporation, and Upper Deck Company, he was considered one of the top five highest-paid athlete endorsers in North America by 1995. Finally, in 2017, Gretzky collaborated with Andrew Peller Ltd. to build Wayne Gretzky Estates, a winery and distillery in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. No. 99 Gretzky’s Wine & Whiskey in Edmonton International Airport, which opened in 2016, and Studio 99 at Rogers Place in Edmonton, Canada, which opened in 2018.
Wayne Gretzky Personal Life
Gretzky met actress Janet Jones while judging on the television show “Dance Fever.” They started dating in 1987, he proposed in January 1988, and they married in July of that year. The Canadian press nicknamed their wedding event, which apparently cost him more than $1 million USD, “The Royal Wedding.” The pair has five children together: three sons and two daughters. Since 2013, one of their daughters, Paulina Gretzky, a singer and model, has been dating professional golfer Dustin Johnson. They have two children.
Wayne Gretzky Real Estate
Wayne acquired a big property in the prestigious Beverly Hills gated neighbourhood of Beverly Park in the late 1980s, shortly after joining the LA Kings. A few years later, he sold his home to a millionaire called Eric Smidt (not the Google billionaire Eric Schmidt). Smidt paid $3 million for the vacant land next door and sold the entire estate for $40 million in 2014.
Wayne and his wife custom-built a house within a gated country club in Thousand Oaks, California, in 2007. The estate spans 6.5 acres and includes a 13,000-square-foot home. The Gretzkys sold the mansion in 2014 to former baseball star Lenny Dykstra, who was promoting himself as a financial expert at the time, for a mind-boggling $18.5 million. The real estate market and Lenny’s guru status both crashed a year later. Lenny attempted to sell the property for $18.5 million during what was maybe the worst period in history to sell a house. He repeatedly reduced the price, finally losing it in foreclosure after declaring bankruptcy and being jailed on fraud charges. To complete the cycle, Wayne and Janet Gretzky repurchased the mansion in 2018 for $13.5 million. Wayne and Janet want to sell their prized house for $22.9 million in October 2020.
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