MUMBAI: India’s badminton star PV Sindhu is the only athlete from the country (no surprises there) to be named among the world’s highest-paid female athletes by Forbes, a list topped by tennis great Serena Willams.
With total earnings of $5.5 million, Sindhu is tied for the 13th place in The Highest-Paid Female Athletes 2019 list released by Forbes on Tuesday.
The list of the world’s richest 15 female athletes is topped by Williams, with total earnings of $29.2 million. Forbes said Williams, 37, plans to play through at least next year but is already planning her next act with a clothing line, ‘S by Serena’, and designs to launch jewellery and beauty products lines by the end of 2020. She also has built a venture portfolio worth more than USD 10 million.
At the second spot is Naomi Osaka, who won the 2018 US Open, defeating 23-time Grand Slam champ Williams. And followed up that breakthrough victory by taking the 2019 Australian Open crown. She has total earnings of $24.3 million.
Coming back to Sindhu, pertinently, of her $5.5 million in earnings, it is the $5 million pulled in from endorsement deals with Bridgestone, JBL, Gatorade, Panasonic and more, that have propelled India’s badminton queen onto the Forbes list.
It is worth noting that aside from Williams and Osaka, only four female athletes WORLDWIDE – Angelique Kerber ($6.5m), Maria Sharapova ($6m), Alex Morgan ($5.5m), and Sloane Stephens ($5.5m) – earn more than Sindhu in terms of endorsement deals.
“Sindhu remains India’s most marketable female athlete. She became the first Indian to win the season-ending BWF World Tour finals in 2018,” Forbes notes.
Forbes said its earnings tally looks at prize money, salaries, bonuses, endorsements and appearance fees between June 2018 and 2019. There are 15 female athletes who made at least $5 million during that time period; for comparison roughly 1,300 male athletes will hit that mark this year.
The top 15 earned a cumulative $146 million, up from $130 million pulled in last year.
Williams and Osaka both earned more than twice as much as the third-highest-paid female athlete in the world, German tennis star Angelique Kerber, who raked in $11.8 million.
2020 could well see a passing of the baton on the Forbes rich list though, from Williams to Osaka. As per Forbes, her endorsement haul will be even greater over the next year after signing a blockbuster, multimillion-dollar pact with Nike in the spring. Osaka, 21, is primed to be one of the faces of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Osaka’s accomplishments, youth, skill and multicultural appeal make her a marketer’s dream. Born to a Japanese mother and Haitian-American father, she was the first Japanese person to win a Grand Slam event and first Asian player to hold the top ranking in singles.
Forbes noted further that tennis remains the most surefire way for female athletes to make millions of dollars. Female athletes in football, basketball and softball earn salaries of pennies on the dollar compared with their male counterparts.
Despite the playing salary gap in team sports, marketing opportunities have opened up in recent years for female athletes thanks to the growth of social media platforms, according to Dan Levy, who heads up the Olympics and female athletes divisions at Wasserman.
Pro athletes now have a way to connect with their fans that doesn’t rely on network TV to build a fan base and connectivity to the consumers that brands want to reach, Levy says. That change alone has helped women become much more powerful in the sports marketing world.
