Naomi Osaka became the highest-paid sportswoman in history in 2019

With 37.4 million dollars (34.3 million euros) in revenue (prize money and sponsorship revenue), Naomi Osaka is the best paid sportswoman in 2019. In the ranking established by Forbes magazine, the Japanese woman is ahead of 1.4 million dollars Serena Williams who, for four years, has been at the top of this ranking. And Naomi Osaka breaks the record for the Russian Maria Sharapova, five-time Grand Slam winner who retired in February and pocketed $ 29.7 million in 2015. 

"For people outside the tennis world, Osaka is a fairly new face with a great story," said David Carter, professor of sports business at the University of South Carolina, for Forbes. “In addition to that, she is young and has a double culture (her father was born in Haiti and her mother is Japanese), attributes which allow a greater number of young people to identify with her. The result is the emergence of a global sports marketing icon, ”said David Carter.

Osaka (winner of the 2018 US Open and the 2019 Australian Open) is in 29th place in the ranking of the 100 best paid athletes established by Forbes, four places ahead of the American Serena Williams and her 23 titles in Grand Slam. The magazine also said that the list, which should be published entirely next week, had not counted two women since 2016.

The date of resumption of the tournaments being for the moment unknown, the Japanese woman, in an interview with CNN Sport , indicated that she took advantage of this period to discover other things, like painting or drawing. “Part of me is of course concerned (about the situation) but I will not forget how to play tennis. I’m not going to train five hours a day because that’s how you get exhausted and you don’t know when the tournaments will start again, ”she said. Now tenth in the world, Osaka had gone through a complicated period, both psychologically and physically, after his victory at the Australian Open in 2019 which had propelled him to the top of the WTA ranking, admitting to even being depressed.

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