NBA superstar Yao Ming becomes a businessman. (Photo : Getty Images)
Basketball superstar Yao Ming unleashed the business-minded man inside him after retiring from the NBA and his professional athlete life.
China Daily featured a couple of Yao's business ventures, all of which appears to have cost him a significant chunk of his retirement fund from serving as Houston Rockets' Big Man.
Obviously taking into account the basic needs of a person, Yao decided to invest in food services specifically in restaurants in Houston, Texas.
He invested $1.5 million to establish his first food service business called "Yao Restaurant and Bar" and successfully urged his parents and Shanghai Basketball friends to bet their money on his second one called the "Yeeha" restaurant.
Aside from that, Yao also ventured into the winery business located in Napa Valley called the Yao Family Wines Hospitality Center.
There he offers free tasting of wines that the Xinhua News Agency described to be packaged in "Yao-sized" bottles.
"This 2012 reserve is incredible," said Kevin Marfell, a visitor in Yao's winery.
According to the Yao Family Wines President Thomas Hinde, Yao Ming is a man with intense passion and seriousness that makes a good partner in business.
"We work to make all components in harmony. We want something that reflects the purity of central Napa and the balance that Yao Ming provides in our crafting the wines together," he explained.
Hinde also noted that while his other businesses are imbued with signs of Yao's basketball life, the wine company he built reflects a different side of him.
"Yao Ming is devoted most of his life to basketball. So we will attract basketball fans, but when you come in, it's not a shrine to basketball. It's again, a complete balance of Yao's life," he added.
Right after retiring, Yao Ming also tried to invest in the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball League and pursued a degree in economics and management, a 2013 GMA Network report revealed.
