The year 2023 comes to an end and with it athletes take stock of their economic successes, beyond sporting successes. Forbes magazine published this Wednesday the list of the 20 highest-paid athletes in the world in the last 12 months. A ranking led by the 22-year-old Polish tennis player, Iga Swiatek, with 21.6 million euros: 8.9 of them earned on the court and the other 12.7 off it.
Swiatek was crowned Roland Garros champion in June for the third time in her career, in addition to lifting the title in the WTA Finals and finishing 2023 as world number one. In addition, the player has signed four new sponsorship agreements this year: Visa, On Shoes or Oshee are some of her brands.
The racket is very present in this classification, since there are nine tennis players within this annual top-10. US Open champion Coco Gauff is in third place with €19.6 million. The 19-year-old American player is also third on the world women’s tennis circuit, after winning four WTA tournaments this year, in addition to the North American Grand Slam.
She is followed by the British tennis player Emma Raducanu (13.7), the Japanese Naomi Osaka (13.6 million) who did not play in 2023 due to maternity leave, the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka (13.3), the Americans Jessica Pegula (11.3) and Venus Williams (11), the Kazakh Elena Rybajina (8.6) and the Canadian Leylah Fernandez (7.9).
Likewise, the second highest-paid athlete of the year is the Chinese skier, Eileen Gu, with 20 million. Gu, an American model, has earned most of her financial income through contracts with different brands such as Louis Vuitton or Victoria’s Secret. In fact, she earned less than 0.1 million, thanks to her competitive section.
The Olympic athlete, who won three medals at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, closes the top-10 of the highest paid. Golfer Nelly Korda occupies eleventh position on this particular list, along with soccer player Megan Rapinoe, with 7.4 million euros. Both Americans.
Her compatriots, basketball player Candance Parker and Alex Morgan, professional soccer player for the San Diego Wave of the National Women’s Soccer League and the United States national team, occupy the thirteenth and fourteenth position with 7.3 and 7 million, respectively.
The Chinese tennis player Qinwen Zheng, who entered 6.5, is fifteenth and the famous American gymnast Simone Biles and the Indian badminton player, P.V., share the sixteenth position. Sindhu (6.4 million). Finally, the list of the twenty athletes with the most earnings closes the Tunisian tennis player Ons Jabeur (5.1), the Canadian golfer Brooke Henderson (4.9) and the Czech tennis player Marketa Vondrousova (4.7 million).