The money for female sports stars is increasing on and off the field, but even for Coco Gauff, Simone Biles and Caitlin Clark, it’s not enough to rank among the elite earners.
It might have been hard to imagine Coco Gauff one-upping her successes of 2023, a year in which she earned $6.7 million in prize money and an estimated $15 million from endorsements and claimed her first Grand Slam title in an emotional victory over Aryna Sabalenka at the U.S. Open. Yet that’s exactly what the 21-year-old American tennis phenom did in 2024, besting her previous prize money high by collecting $9.4 million and boosting her earnings off the court to $25 million with the additions of hair-care brand Carol’s Daughter, Fanatics and Naked Juice to a sponsor group that now contains 11 partners.
Gauff’s estimated total of $34.4 million last year represents one of the best financial stretches for a female athlete ever measured by Forbes, which has tracked athlete earnings since 1990. (Only Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams have posted higher totals in a calendar year, peaking at $57.3 million and $45.9 million, respectively, in 2021.)
Still, Gauff does not rank among the world’s 50 highest-paid athletes. In fact, she doesn’t even come close—her 2024 total would leave her $19.2 million short of the threshold for inclusion on the ranking (which tracks earnings between May 1, 2024, and May 1, 2025). And it’s only getting harder to qualify for the highest earners list. The cutoff for 2025’s top 50 is $53.6 million, a 19% increase over the $45.2 million required to make the list last year and more than double the $24 million it was a decade ago.
For the second consecutive year, no woman lands among the world’s 50 highest-paid athletes. Williams was the last to do it, in 2023—her sixth appearance on the list in nine years—but she has settled into retirement and is no longer eligible. Only three other female athletes have qualified for the top 50 since 2012: tennis stars Li Na and Maria Sharapova, both of whom are retired, and Osaka, who earlier this month won her first tournament since becoming a mother in July 2023 and is still ramping back up her sponsor portfolio. No women landed on the list from 2017 to 2019.
Illustration by Neil Jamieson for Forbes
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That absence largely comes down to salaries and prize money, which are tied to league revenue, with media rights fees playing arguably the most crucial role. And while it’s an area that is improving—Deloitte forecasts that elite women’s sports will generate $590 million in broadcast revenue this year, up 74% from its $340 million projection for 2024—men’s sports dwarf their female counterparts. For example, the WNBA more than tripled its media rights fees to an annual average of $200 million under a series of new broadcast deals negotiated by the NBA. But the NBA raised its own mark to $6.9 billion, from $3 billion.
Considering that massive gap, it’s easy to see why basketball superstar Caitlin Clark is earning just over $150,000 in salary across her first two WNBA seasons, whereas Victor Wembanyama, the NBA’s top pick before Clark went pro, pocketed nearly $25 million between his freshman and sophomore campaigns. Other sports have taken steps to level the playing field, particularly tennis, where Grand Slam tournaments offer equal prize money to men and women. But even in that sport, earnings disparities persist at smaller events.
The WNBA’s players are likely headed for a raise soon after opting out of their collective bargaining agreement, which expires at the end of the 2025 season. ESPN, citing an unnamed team source, recently speculated that the league’s max salary could reach as high as $1 million per season, up from about $250,000 now. But that still wouldn’t equal the NBA’s minimum salary of $1.2 million, which is bound to climb even higher in the coming years.
The National Women’s Soccer League, which raised its media rights fees nearly 60 times over with a series of deals that kicked off in 2024, finds itself in a similar dilemma. Even after the league eliminated its draft and established an open free-agent system, its teams are capped at spending $3.3 million on player salaries across their whole rosters. And while that mark is expected to rise to $5.1 million by 2030, the NWSL players’ union can’t seek any major changes to the compensation system until the sport’s CBA expires that year.
Still, even if soaring revenues in men’s sports keep pushing the earnings top 50 out of reach for now, elite women’s sports are showing promising financial growth each year. Deloitte estimates that they will collectively reach $2.35 billion in global revenue this year, a notable increase over 2024’s $1.88 billion and 2023’s $981 million. Commercial revenue, which includes team and league sponsorships, is expected to account for 54% of that figure, demonstrating that brands are showing more interest in engaging with women’s sports.
Marketers are also engaging with athletes directly, seeing a much clearer advantage with female athlete endorsements than in years past. Freestyle skier Eileen Gu earned an estimated $22 million off the slopes in 2024 while gymnast Simone Biles collected $11 million and Clark, who works with Nike, Wilson Sporting Goods and State Farm, among other partners, pulled in $8 million off the court. Meanwhile, New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu, whose Nike signature shoe has grown extremely popular among NBA players, earned an estimated $6 million from her endorsements and business endeavors—a mark that equaled or surpassed the off-field earnings of 18 members of the world’s 50 highest-paid athletes list for 2025.
As far as total earnings, the top-earning female athletes are maintaining their momentum. The median of the top 20 women increased to $10.7 million in 2024, from $8.5 million a year earlier. And with 17 members of that group under age 30, their best years could be ahead of them.
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