Don’t you just love it when Forbes magazine puts out one of its top earners list? The latest one is women in sport and it is fantastic to see that tennis players totally dominate the list with seven out of the top 10 being tennis players and in fact they occupy the top four positions.
Making up the balance is a NASCAR driver, a figure skater (c’mon, really?) and a golfer which is not really a sport but a good walk spoiled as I have quoted Mark Twain before.
So here is the list with the athletes’ earnings, and this is for 2012:
1. MARIA SHARAPOVA - $23million
2. SERENA WILLIAMS - $20.5million
3. LI NA - $18.2million
4. VICTORIA AZARENKA - $15.7million
5. DANICA PATRICK (NASCAR) - $15million
6. KIM YUNA (figure skating) - $14million
7. CAROLINE WOZNIACKI - $13.6million
8. AGA RADWANSKA - $7.4million
9. ANA IVANOVIC - $7million
10. PAULA CREAMER (golf) - $5.5million
If you break down their earnings, Maria made $23million from endorsements compared to $12million for Serena who has cut back on the number of companies she endorses. Dare we say going for quality over quantity??? Serena certainly works hard for her companies; as examples the Gatorade bottle is in front of her at every press conference and she will mention OPI at any opportunity.
It was a slip of the tongue from Maria earlier this year at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, and while she didn’t mention the sponsor, she did have a laugh at the product. Here is the transcript: “How long did it take for them to get the trophy out? I was getting a heat stroke out there. I was still drinking water. It takes a lot for me to start drinking water.” Ooh … problem is that Evian water is one of her sponsors.
While Serena is way out in front with on-court earnings of $8.5million, on the endorsement front Li is actually second behind Sharapova because she made $15million from the companies she is a spokesperson for.
Azarenka made $9million from endorsements which were outdone by Woznaicki on $11million. The lowest figure for endorsements was with Radwanska, but she still raked in $2.5million and the lowest on-court earnings amount was $1million, that was for Ivanovic.
In the overall top 100 list of athletes Roger Federer was the leading tennis player at No.2 behind Tiger Woods. The other tennis players on that list were Serena, Li, Sharapova, Nadal and Djokovic.
