The sporting and economic successes of young tennis players have long become commonplace. The better you perform, the more attention you will receive from sponsors, which, in turn, will allow you to invest even more in your career and win. The so-called virtuous circle arises, antonym of vicious circle. This is exactly what 19-year-old American Cori Gauff, the newly crowned US Open women’s singles champion, will soon experience.
Related Materials
Sabalenka lost the US Open final. And 19-year-old Gauff became a first-time TBS champion.
No, Gauff had everything in order financially before. In the United States, she has long been actively promoted as the “new Serena”, i.e. Williams Sr., so there are no problems with sponsors. But we’ll talk more about that below, but for now let’s calculate the income of the American woman on the court. Before the US Open, Corey’s prize money for the 2023 season was $2,507,372, the singles title earned her $3 million, and Gauff competed in doubles with Jessica Pegula. The athletes were in the quarterfinals, which means that each will receive another 50 thousand dollars, so after the US Open, the 19-year-old athlete’s official prize money for the current season will increase to 5,557,372 dollars.
In which tournaments did Gauff win the most this year? First of all, these are the older ones. For reaching the fourth round of the Australian Open, the athlete received $236,578, and the Roland Garros quarterfinals brought her $400,000, but the largest amount, if we remove the US Open from the equation, went to her for the title in the thousand dollar event in Cincinnati, his last tournament against the American TBS. Gauff’s personal account was then replenished with $454,500.
Related Materials
Alcaraz was unable to defend his US Open title and lost to Medvedev. But he will be consoled by the millions he has earned.
Let’s summarize. Now the young tennis player’s total earnings in her career, including the US Open, amount to $11,107,463 and in the general historical table, of course, she is still far from the recognized leaders. Topping the list is the aforementioned Serena Williams, who has $94,816,730 in career prize money of hers. Following at a considerable distance are her sister Venus ($42,595,397 including elimination in the first round of the US Open) and Simona Halep ($40,203,437), and Maria Sharapova ($38,777,962) is fourth. If we assume that Gauff will continue to perform well in the future, then she can reach, say, second place. But it will be more difficult to reach Serena.
Corey’s off-court earnings are even more substantial; This statement is valid for almost any top-level tennis player. Before the US Open, Forbes calculated that in the last 12 months alone the athlete earned 12 million dollars, according to this indicator she only surpassed Iga Swiatek (14 million dollars) and, attention, Emma Raducanu (15 million dollars), who It has been more lately due to injuries than playing. (Sponsors love the sensational 2021 US Open champion – that’s what shooting on time means!)
And Gauff’s total earnings in the last 12 months before the US Open amounted to $15.2 million, ranking third among women by this measure and seventh if men are included in the list.
Top 10 tennis players by earnings (September 2022 – August 2023):
Tennis player Prize money, millions of dollars Off the court, millions of dollars Total, millions of dollars hey Ga uff 3.21215.28Casper Ruud6.4814 , 49Naomi Osaka0. 11212.110Jessica Pegula4.9610.9
Sponsors
Gauff’s career is managed by Ohio-based agency Team8, run by Roger Federer. Corey’s sponsors include world-famous brands such as Microsoft and Rolex, as well as sports equipment manufacturers New Balance and Head. And already this year he signed partnership agreements with Baker Tilly, Bose and UPS.
Cori Gauff in a fashion photo shoot with New Balance
Photo: From the personal archive of Cori Gauff.
By the way, an interesting conflict arose with New Balance. Gauff signed her first contract with this company at the age of 14 and recently signed a new long-term agreement with it. And this despite the fact that Corey’s career, we remember, is managed by Federer’s company, which also owns part of the shares of On Running, which is a direct competitor of New Balance. However, the lawyers have probably resolved this issue.
Related Materials
Stories
Medvedev is among the 4 highest paid tennis players in the world and Sabalenka is not even in the top ten
But several sources estimate Gauff’s “net” fortune (i.e., on- and off-court income minus taxes) at approximately $10 million. In comparison, Serena Williams’ net worth is estimated at $290-$300 million. As we can see, Corey has room to improve. That is why she closely follows the situation of prize money for women, which does not correspond to those of men in all tournaments.
“In terms of prize money, a strong inequality still persists, at the tournament level in the WTA-1000, -500, -250 categories. As far as I know, there is a ten-year plan to improve the situation. There is much to improve. But I’m proud of what we have now, especially in the Grand Slam tournaments,” Gauff said at a news conference before the start of the US Open.
Well, $15 million a year is clearly not the limit for Gauff. At the US Open 2023, he won $3 million in prize money at a time, this is only $200 thousand less than in the last 12 months before the tournament. Now Corey’s attractiveness in the eyes of sponsors will probably increase significantly and new interesting contracts will appear that will allow him to climb a similar Forbes list, which will be published a year later.
