Gareth Bale has called time on his football career at the age of 33.
The former Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, Real Madrid and Los Angeles FC forward enjoyed a trophy-laden career spanning from 2006 to 2023, making him one of the most successful footballers of his generation.
After sealing a mega-money move to Real Madrid in 2013, believed to be worth £85million, Bale's wealth continued to grow before he signed an eyewatering new deal at the Bernabeu in 2016 which doubled his earnings to £600,000 per week.
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It is believed his net worth as of 2023 is £119million.
Bale has a number of business interests outside of football and has been preparing for life after the screaming stops for quite some time.
He opened his bar 'Elevens' on Castle Street, Cardiff, back in 2017 and built on the success there by combining his next bar venture with his other love with; golf.
Bale's 'Par 59' on St Mary's Street in Cardiff opened its doors last year. The collaboration between Gareth Bale's Elevens Group and events company, The DEPOT, is a bar and mini-golf destination in the Welsh capital's city centre. They have now opened a second branch in Bristol on Millennium Promenade.
Bale, who is tee-total, last year made a "significant investment" in Penderyn Distillery, becoming one of 61 shareholders in the whisky business. They made a single malt named "Yma o Hyd" to tie in with Dafydd Iwan's song of the same name ahead of the World Cup.
He has other interests, too. Just last year, it was revealed that Bale and a number of other high-profile sports stars invested in Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s new golf venture TGL, a stadium-based, high-tech golf league in conjunction with the PGA Tour, which is due to start in January 2024 and rival LIV Golf.
He has also had various commercial tie-ups with brands over the years, such as with Adidas, BT Sport, Lucozade and EA Sports.
Indeed his vast wealth has even been the topic of conversation among his team-mates at Wales, as revealed by former Wales assistant boss Osian Roberts recently.
Roberts, who is now assistant manager at Crystal Palace, told The Athletic: “They joked during the Euros that they wanted Gareth to buy a Welsh club lower down. It was Merthyr (who play in the seventh tier of the English league system), actually.
"Everyone would sign for him and take them all the way through the pyramid to the Premier League, so they could all play together every week. That’s how close they were — they didn’t want to just do it during the international breaks, they wanted to be together every day of the week.”
Chris Gunter, meanwhile, who has played for Wales with Bale for 14 years, has said he would be on board if the Wales captain decided to do it now.
“We would still say it now!” Gunter added. “We used to joke quite a lot about that. Gaz would have been the one who would have had to buy it for obvious reasons, with his salary.
“We used to say it was so easy with Wales because everybody was on the same page — there were no agendas, and that’s where it came from. And we always used to say that we wouldn’t have been a bad team either.
“But that was the sense, that if we could have stayed together in a group in a club environment, I dare say we would have enjoyed football even more than what we have now.”
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