UFC women’s bantamweight champ Ronda Rousey is also in the list, placing eighth with her $6.5 million earnings, followed by golfer Stacy Lewis at ninth with $6.4 million. As Forbes noted, “The top 10 female athletes banked $124 million in salary, prize money, appearances, licensing and endorsements between June 2014 and June 2015”.
Advertisement
According to Kurt Badenhausen of Forbes.com, the five-time Grand Slam victor from Russian Federation is the world’s highest-paid female athlete for the 11th consecutive year, with Serena checking in at No. 2. Still, it will be interesting to see if Maria Sharapova can finally crack the top 25 next year.
Maria Sharapova comes in at No. 1 – for the 11th straight year – with a whopping .7 million in total earnings.
There have been large gains in the earnings of women competitors in the last several years, though it’s interesting to note the significant payout disparity that still remains.
After winning last year’s French Open, Sharapova earned bonuses from sponsors Nike and Head. Badenhausen says “sales doubled in the past year more than three million pounds of candy”.
Advertisement
Other female athletes who made it to the top three slots in Forbes’ list included tennis players Serena Williams and Caroline Wozniacki, with $24.6 million and $14.6 million, respectively. “Tennis – despite its efforts to engage new communities of participants – is still perceived to be a country-club sport, where the typical demographic both playing and watching avidly is affluent and white”. That’s what happens when you not only begin partnerships with Chase and Audemars Piguet, but manage to expand your relationship with Gatorade to include PepsiCo. Patrick earned $13.9 million mostly from endorsements and commercials. Williams is also a new endorser of Pepsi. By signing a deal with watchmaker Ritmo Mundo this past spring, Kvitova raised her endorsement earnings to $1.8 million. In her pro career, she has earned twice as much money as Sharapova at $72.7 million. Her parntership with GoDaddy resulted in more Super Bowl commercials than any other celebrity.
