Naomi Osaka Beats Serena Williams Again as Highest-Paid Athlete

Despite the fact that it has not been his best season in terms of sports performance, The Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka will end the year 2022 leading one of the most prestigious rankings: that of the highest paid athletes in the world according to Forbes magazine.

A ranking in which women’s tennis is the great protagonist, since Among the five highest paid athletes in the world there are up to four tennis players from the WTA circuit. A figure that increases to seven tennis players if we count the Top-10 of the Forbes ranking.

At 25 years old, Osaka appears to be leading this classification with earnings of 51.1 million dollars, of which 1.1 million come from the sports prizes achieved this year and the remaining 50 from the income that the Japanese has received in various sponsorships. All this despite the fact that Osaka has been one of the athletes who have been affected after the bankruptcy of the FTX cryptocurrency platform.

Thus Osaka remains at the top of this particular ranking in which the American Serena Williams appears in second position, who at 41 years old has achieved earnings of 41.3 million dollars in 2022of which 300,000 are from his awards achieved at the US Open and the other 41 from sponsorships or generated by the companies he has.

The podium is closed by Chinese Eileen Gu, one of the great figures of freestyle skiing at 19 years of age, who after her great performance at the 2022 Winter Olympics, with two golds and one silver, has bagged 20.1 millions of dollarsof which only 100,000 come from awards while the remaining 20 are due to its sponsorships with Red Bull, Louis Vouitton or JD.

Tennis closes the Top-5 of the ranking of highest paid athletes in the world with the presence of Emma Raducanu and Iga Swiatek. The 20-year-old Briton closed 2022 with earnings of $18.7 million, in fourth position in the ranking, thanks to its sponsorships with Dior, Evian, Porsche, Vodafone, Tiffanys and Nike. For his part Iga Swiatek appears in fifth position with earnings of $14.9 million. The peculiarity of the Swiatek case is that the Polish tennis player has won more money in sports prizes, a total of 9.9 million dollars, than by endorsements, of which he has received 5 thanks to the agreements he has with Asics or PZU.