Nominal vs present value
Local display: $18.0m · Rebased to 2024 USD via US CPI-U
How the total breaks down
Packers salary. Base pay under his 1994/1997 Green Bay extensions.
Endorsements. Wrangler, MasterCard and other national deals that followed the Super Bowl XXXI win.
Impact 85
- Only NFL player on the 1997 Forbes Super 40 besides Barry Sanders
- Turned a small-market franchise quarterback into a national sponsor magnet
- Set up two more decades of nine-figure career earnings across four teams
Favre's 1997 ranking proved a quarterback in a small television market could still command national endorsement dollars if the winning was real — three straight MVPs and a title outweighed market size. That case became the standard pitch for every small-market star quarterback who followed, from Manning in Indianapolis to Rodgers in Green Bay itself a decade later.
By the end of the 1996 season Favre had won a Super Bowl and his third straight MVP, and Forbes' 1997 Super 40 list put a hard number on what that run was worth: $9.2 million, split almost two-to-one toward salary over endorsements. It was modest compared to boxers and Jordan-era basketball money, but it made Favre the highest-earning NFL player that year not named Barry Sanders. His career would eventually top $140 million in salary alone by 2010 — this snapshot is the moment the ascent became a Forbes-list story.