Highest annual earnings for a tennis player ever (female)

Three-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka (Japan) made $37.4 m (£30.2 m) in prize money ($3.4 m; £2.7 m) and endorsements ($34 m; £27.5 m) in the 12 months to 1 June 2020, according to Forbes magazine’s World’s Highest-Paid Athletes 2020 survey. Serena Williams, who topped the list in 2016-19 with earnings of between $18.1 m (£13.6 m) and $29.2 m (£23.1 m), weighed in with $36 m (£29.1 m) in 2019-20 as tennis served up another dominant display among female athletes from across the sporting world.

Osaka’s earnings obliterated the previous record for a female athlete over a 12-month period: Maria Sharapova’s $29.7 m (£19.4 m) in 2014-15. The now-retired Russian player was the highest-earning female athlete in 2011-15.

Respectively, Osaka and Williams were ranked at No.29 and No.33 among all athletes in 2019-20 – the first time two women had made Forbes’ 100 highest-paid athletes list since 2016. “The last top-earning female athlete outside of Williams and Sharapova was Serena’s sister Venus in 2003,” wrote Forbes senior editor Kurt Badenhausen. “Tennis remains the only route for women to rank alongside the top-paid male sports stars. Sharapova, Li Na, Serena Williams and now Osaka are the only women to rank among the 100 top earners in sports since 2012. The highest-paid female athlete every year since Forbes started tracking the data in 1990 has been a tennis player, with Steffi Graf and Martina Hingis the top earners for most of the 1990s.”

At No.1 overall was another tennis ace, Roger Federer, who made a staggering $106.3 m (£86 m) in prize money ($6.3 m; £5.1 m) and endorsements ($100 m; £80.9 m) in the 12 months to 1 June 2020. Novak Djokovic ($44.6 m; £36.1 m) was at No.23 and Rafael Nadal ($40 m; £32.3 m) landed at No.27 – two places higher than Osaka – in a Forbes top 100 dominated by high earners in basketball, American football, soccer, tennis, boxing and golf.

Osaka won back-to-back Grand Slam singles titles at the 2018 US Open and 2019 Australian Open, raising her profile and attracting endorsement opportunities with the likes of Nike, Nissan and Yonex, whose tennis rackets she has used for more than a decade. Almost all of her 15 endorsement partners are worth seven-figure sums annually to the diminutive Osaka. She’s also set to be one of the most prominent faces of the delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics, having already signed lucrative endorsement deals that will be used to market the Games in 2021.

Osaka maintained her on-court presence with a third Grand Slam title at the US Open in September 2020, defeating Victoria Azarenka in the final at New York’s USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, 1-6, 6-3, 6-3.

The Japanese star (b. 16 October 1997), who turned pro in September 2013, was ranked No.3 in the world by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) as of 1 February 2021. She was just 22 years old when the 2019-20 tracking period for her record-shattering earnings year began. Game, set and match Osaka.