Sports and Business News: May 29th

Federer's Finances Top Forbes List

For the first time since Forbes started ranking the highest-paid athletes a professional tennis player top’s the list. Roger Federer made $106.3 million according to Forbes, making him this year’s highest-paid athlete. The Swiss tennis star made $6.3 million from match prizes and an eye-popping $100 million from endorsements. As we noted two weeks ago, female tennis star Naomi Osaka is the highest-paid female athlete and came in at No. 29 on this year’s overall list.

Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

According to Forbes, soccer stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, who come in at No. 2 and No. 3 on the list, had a reduced salary because of the coronavirus, which opened the window for Federer to make his way to the highest earner. 

Messi was the highest-paid athlete in 2019. Federer, Ronaldo and Messi were the only three professional athletes that earned more than $100 million in the last 12 months. Brazilian soccer player Neymar came in at No. 4 and NBA superstar LeBron James is No. 5. 

EA Sports and NFL Extend Partnership

The NFL and Electronic Arts announced a multi-year partnership extension. The announcement comes on the heels of Madden NFL 20, which was the most successful game in the franchise's history. According to an NFL Press Release, unique players have gone up 30 percent year-over-year and more than one billion minutes have been spent watching people play Madden on Twitch. EA Sports and the NFL have been partners for more than 30 years. The first Madden video game came out in 1988.

Daily Coronavirus and Business Update

There are 5.8 million cases of the coronavirus worldwide with more than 362,000 deaths. There are 1.7 million cases in the U.S. with more than 101,000 deaths. Brazil has 438,000 cases and has seen increases in the number of cases reported throughout the week.

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday with the goal of clamping down on the behavior of social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook. At a press conference, Trump summarized the goal of the order, which is to "make it that social media companies that engage in censoring or any political conduct will not be able to keep their liability shield." Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, internet platforms that host third-party content are protected for posts from users. Trump's signing of the executive order was triggered by Twitter's decision this week to affix a fact-checking label to a Trump tweet for the first time. 

The spat escalated further Friday after Twitter placed a public interest notice on a Trump tweet, saying the tweet violated the platform’s rules about the “glorification of violence.” The tweet from Trump regarded violence in Minnesota following the death of George Floyd after he had been handcuffed by police officers in Minneapolis. The official White House Twitter account then reposted the tweet that had a warning placed on it. Twitter then placed a warning on the White House’s tweet.

TheStreet's Katherine Ross contributed to this report.