Hamilton loses 'most marketable athlete' status in 2026

Lewis Hamilton is no longer sport’s most marketable athlete - or even the most marketable Formula 1 driver, having fallen behind Ferrari team-mate Charles Leclerc - in the latest rankings created by media and events business SportsPro.

Hamilton was top of the 2025 SportsPro marketability rankings for athletes, with a total marketability score of 96.03 out of 100.

In 2026, Hamilton is ranked 22nd. His marketability score is 66.63, on par with footballers Neymar and Vinicius Junior.

Hamilton’s team-mate Leclerc is ahead in ninth on the list with a marketability score of 71.12, up from 25th in the 2025 list with a score of 75.03. 

The next-highest driver is Max Verstappen (48th, up from 81st last year), while 2025 champion Lando Norris (78th) is now ranked behind McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri (56th) having been 23 places ahead in 41st last year.

New champion Kimi Antonelli is the lowest placed F1 driver who made the top 150 in 126th, a 48-place drop from 78th in 2025.

MotoGP rider Marc Marquez is the only motorsport athlete not tied to F1 on the list, ranking 86th, five places above Alpine F1 driver Pierre Gasly.

Belarusian tennis player Aryna Sabalenka is top of the list with, ahead of Chinese skier Eileen Gu, Greek basketball player Giannis Antetokounmpo, Norwegian footballer Erling Haaland, and Spanish tennis player Carlos Alcaraz.

American athletes make up 32% of the top 150 while British and Indian athletes are next with 7.3% of the pie apiece.

Football (soccer) has 33 athletes on the list and a 22% share of the list while motorsport’s eight representatives (5.3%) put it sixth on the list of sports, behind tennis and cricket but ahead of golf and boxing. 

Female NASCAR driver Toni Breidinger and F1 driver Liam Lawson dropped off the list having appeared in 2025.

How the marketability scores are calculated - why is Hamilton lower than Leclerc?

The marketability score is a combination of brand equity, momentum, and commercial trajectory, three metrics that are calculated by combining "several hundred data points" and more than 3000 brand partnership records over July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026.

Scroll down to see how the motorsport athletes rank within the top 150.

Brand equity is the strength and trust of the athlete’s brand, momentum is the rate at which the athlete’s value is growing, and commercial trajectory is the room for an athlete’s future commercial growth. 

The latter metric is given the smallest weighting out of the three, and the scores are relative rather than absolute; Sabalenka’s ranking puts her top with the other athletes in mind. 

Leclerc, 29, has a higher brand equity score than Hamilton but a lower momentum score. The Monegasque’s ranking of commercial trajectory also boosts his ranking compared to Hamilton.

Age and longevity in the sport has an impact on the trajectory score: at 41 Hamilton is the joint-oldest athlete on the list with Cristiano Ronaldo and LeBron James.

Furthermore, Leclerc scores highly on the commercial trajectory metric, implying that there is strength in his brand that hasn’t been converted into commercial returns compared to Hamilton.

Leclerc scores high in brand equity due to his personal style and public presentation, plus the size of his audience and how actively that audience engages with his brand. 

Chris Collins, president of NorthStar (which powers the rankings) said to BlackBook Motorsport that Leclerc has "one of the strongest established brands of any athlete in the world.

"He ranks second of all 247 athletes we assessed on brand equity, built on how he presents himself, a compelling personal story and premium partners who keep choosing to work with him.

"As one of the most-followed drivers on the grid, it’s little surprise to see his audience scores performing well, but it also emphasises that his followers actively interact with his profile. He also benefits from a high audience breadth score, an expected outcome for all Formula 1 drivers thanks to their global profile."

He added of Hamilton: "What keeps him below the top 10 isn’t his brand, it’s time. At 41, there is naturally less career runway ahead, and a forward-looking assessment should read a great career in its later chapters exactly that way."