Wayne Gretzky Net Worth 2026: How 'The Great One' Built $250 Million

On This Page

• $250 Million, Mostly Earned After The Last Shift
• The 1988 Trade Was The Money Moment
• Putting No. 99 On A Wine Bottle
• Lemieux Bought One Team. Gretzky Bought A Little Of Everything.
• Net Worth: Year by Year
• Connected Wealth
• Top Takeaways to Success
• Frequently Asked Questions

What you probably don’t know is that the salary from his record-breaking career is now the smaller half of his fortune.

Gretzky is worth an estimated $250 million, and much of that was built after his last shift, through endorsements, ownership, real estate, and a winery bearing his number.

$250 Million, Mostly Earned After The Last Shift

Wayne Gretzky’s net worth is an estimated $250 million in 2026, one of the largest fortunes in hockey history. He earned well as a player across a record-shattering career with Edmonton, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and the Rangers, but the bulk of the wealth came from turning the most famous name in the sport into a decades-long business: endorsement deals that outlasted his playing days, ownership and executive stakes in hockey, restaurants carrying his name, high-value property in California and elsewhere, and a winery.

That figure is an estimate compiled from public reporting, and outlets like Celebrity Net Worth and Forbes land in a similar range depending on how they value his ownership stakes, real estate, and winery interests. Treat $250 million as a well-researched approximation rather than an audited number, since private holdings shift constantly.

The 1988 Trade Was The Money Moment

Gretzky’s fortune began on a backyard rink in Brantford, Ontario, where his father Walter flooded the yard each winter and drilled the fundamentals into a tiny prodigy. By his teens Gretzky was a national phenomenon, and by his early twenties he was rewriting the NHL record book with the Edmonton Oilers.

Then, in 1988, he was traded to the Los Angeles Kings. The move shocked Canada and transformed hockey’s commercial reach. Los Angeles is the entertainment capital of the world, and suddenly hockey’s greatest star was skating there every night. Celebrities showed up to games. National advertisers took notice. The NHL later expanded into Sun Belt markets like Anaheim, San Jose, and Tampa Bay, a wave many credit to the “Gretzky effect.”

For Gretzky personally, it meant a level of mainstream fame no hockey player had ever reached, and the endorsement income that comes with it. It’s why he sits comfortably among the wealthiest names on our richest hockey players list and the broader richest athletes rankings. The habits mattered as much as the fame, though. He didn’t simply cash endorsement checks; he steadily built ownership positions, restaurants, and eventually the winery, converting celebrity into assets that keep producing income whether or not he lifts a finger.

Putting No. 99 On A Wine Bottle

The signature consumer asset is Wayne Gretzky Estates, a winery and distillery in Canada producing wine and whisky under the No. 99 name. It turned his jersey number into a shelf-stable business that earns whether or not he makes an appearance, and it scales without his time — bottles keep moving through retail year-round.

Around it sit the positions that keep him attached to the sport financially: a past ownership interest in the Phoenix Coyotes, and later a vice-chairman ambassador role tied to the Edmonton Oilers ownership group. Add the restaurants bearing his name and a long habit of buying and selling multimillion-dollar homes across Southern California — he has held estates in the Los Angeles area since his Kings days — and property appreciation in those markets has quietly added to the fortune independent of anything he does on camera.

Lemieux Bought One Team. Gretzky Bought A Little Of Everything.

The instructive comparison is with his great rival. Mario Lemieux, worth an estimated $300 million, concentrated his fortune on owning a single franchise, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and rode it to a reported $900 million valuation. Gretzky spread his money across endorsements, a winery, real estate, and team stakes instead — a lower ceiling, but far more surfaces earning at once.

Against the modern generation, Sidney Crosby has earned enormous active-player money, but Gretzky’s decades-long brand shows the compounding power of being the sport’s defining name. That breadth is why his net worth climbed from roughly $180 million in 2010 to $250 million by the mid-2020s: the money sits in appreciating and brand-driven assets rather than salary that ended with his career. He was running the brand-first playbook before most athletes understood there was one. For the full ranking, see our richest hockey players list.