Professional athletes are earning more and more money, as demonstrated by their income figures at the end of 2024. But the fifteen women who top the earnings list do not reach, adding all their salaries, what only one of the men earns, the Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.
The pages of Forbes and Sportico have published their rankings of economic earnings in sports in the year that ends, which differ only slightly in the amounts and which coincide in the diagnosis: they earn more every season, even much more, but they continue to a sidereal distance from his colleagues both in prizes for results and in sponsorship.
The fifteen women at the top of the list do not reach, adding all their salaries, what Cristiano Ronaldo earns (260)
Both lists place the American tennis player Coco Gauff, 20 years old and third in the world rankings, at the head of the women who earned the most in 2024: between 30 and 34 million dollars. One eighth as much as Cristiano, who entered 260.
According to Sportico, the fifteen athletes who earned the most in the last twelve months totaled 221 million dollars, 27% more than last year. A notable improvement, and even more so when eleven of them, compared to only six in the previous year, brought in more than ten million.
But even the 50th man on the list far surpasses Gauff, who repeats for the second consecutive year as the athlete with the most income, 30.4 million between prizes (9.4) and sponsorships (21) according to the same source .
Coco Gauff celebrates a point.
Gauff thus joins the exclusive list of those who have managed to become ‘thirty millionaires’ in a single year, which previously included only two other tennis players, her compatriot Serena Williams and the Japanese Naomi Osaka, former world number ones. How much will Gauff earn if he reaches that position?
The North American also holds the record for the most money won in a women’s tournament, the 4.8 million dollars she pocketed for winning the last WTA finals in Riyadh, a month and a half ago.
Nine of the fifteen athletes with the highest income are tennis players and three are golfers. Completing the list of the best fifteen are artistic skier Eileen Gu, gymnast Simone Biles and basketball player Caitlin Clark.
For Forbes, there are 10 tennis players among the 15 with the most earnings, because it includes the semi-retired Venus Williams on the list (two matches in the entire course) and removes the New Zealand golfer Lydia Ko.
The curious case of Gu
Gu, Biles, Clark and Osaka are the only ones on the list who receive virtually all of their income from endorsement deals. But the case of the skier is exceptional, because, in a sport that barely generates financial prizes, the Chinese athlete rose to second place in earnings, or third depending on each ranking, only thanks to advertising agreements.
Gu, born in San Francisco 21 years ago but of Chinese nationality like her mother, won three medals at the 2022 Beijing Games. Her popularity in both Asia and America skyrocketed and she received contracts with top brands, including Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, Porsche, Red Bull, Anta or IWC Schaffhausen.
All of this brought her $22.1 million this year, more than any other athlete for that reason. Also Americans Simone Biles, winner of eleven Olympic medals, and basketball player Clark, debutant on the list thanks to her stellar transition from university to professional basketball, owe practically all of their 2024 income to sponsorships: 11.1 million, which places them ninth and tenth in the Sportico portal table.
Swiatek, on the winning podium
The Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek appears on the podium for total earnings in both lists with 21.4-23.8 million and precedes other racket companions such as the Chinese Zheng Qinwen (20.6), the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka (17.7 -18.7), the Japanese Naomi Osaka (12.9-15.9) and the British Emma Raducanu (12.9-14.7).
Among them, only Sabalenka, world number one at the end of the season, earned more from prizes than from sponsorships (9.7/8 million). In the case of Osaka, the imbalance in favor of advertising agreements is overwhelming: she only received $870,000 as a prize for her results on the court (she is now 58th in the ranking), but 12-15 million for lending her image to different brands. , among them Nike, Panasonic, Tag Heuer, Etsy or Louis Vuitton.
The eighth place of the two tables goes to the American golf player Nelly Korda, with 14.4 million, 4.4 for hitting the clubs correctly. The Italian tennis player Jasmine Paolini (8-10 million), the Thai golfer Jeeno Thitikul ( 9.1), the American tennis player Jessica Pegula (8.2-10.2) and the Kazakh Elena Rybakina (7.9) and the golfer Lydia Ko (6.7), triple Olympic medalist, close the list of the 15 athletes with the highest income in 2024. Qinwen, Clark, Paolini, Thitikul and Ko were not on last year’s list.
Among the highest paid men, according to Forbes, Ronaldo is followed by the Spanish golf player Jon Rahm (218 million), the Argentine soccer player Leo Messi (135), the American basketball player LeBron James (128), the Greek Giannis Antetokounmpo (111) and the French footballer Kylian Mbappé (110).
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