The paths U.S. women's national soccer team G Hope Solo and F Abby Wambach have taken in the "lucrative but arduous business of profiting from their athletic toil are markedly different," according to Brant James of ESPNW.com. Solo has "leveraged her instant fame from multitudes of television appearances and magazine covers to sign deals worth millions of dollars in the months following the World Cup." Meanwhile, Wambach is "earning a comfortable living as an endorser" and has been "much less visible." Wambach's "snippets of national branding exposure have been limited to a commercial for the MagicJack Internet phone device." Solo said, "It's strange to me. I'm 30 years old, I just got off shoulder surgery, I didn't have my best World Cup, yet all of a sudden I am endorsing all sorts of products, I am asked to be on television shows and I always take it with a grain of salt. You can't predict it." James noted Solo has signed "multiyear endorsement deals with Gatorade, Bank of America, BlackBerry, Ubisoft and Electronic Arts that are believed to exceed seven figures." She said that she has "declined offers to pose for various men's magazines." Solo: "I have not really used sex to sell because I think you can really embrace being the athlete first. ... I agreed to do ESPN The Magazine because they really illustrate the athletic body and they celebrate it." Solo also is appearing on this season of "Dancing with the Stars." Burns Entertainment & Sports Marketing President Doug Shabelman said of Solo's being on the show, "It takes a little bit of the seasonality away from her." He added, "What 'Dancing with the Stars' does is put her out with a different audience, puts her out in front of millions of people on a weekly basis." On the other hand, Wambach's agent, Wasserman Media Group's Dan Levy, said of his client, "Trying to max out every last opportunity, that's just not how she's wired" (ESPNW.com, 10/24).
