By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Thursday December 23, 2021
The off-season has been busy for 2021 US Open champion Emma Raducanu. The 19-year-old, who won the title in New York while she was making just her second appearance at a Grand Slam, has started work with Torben Beltz, the longtime coach of Angelique Kerber, and she’s also been busy racking up endorsement deals off the court.
Raducanu, who is managed by IMG’s Max Eisenbud, has inked several lucrative endorsement deals since her triumph in New York.
Just this week Raducanu won the BBC’s sports personality of the year award and locked up a deal to become a global brand ambassador for British Airways. Those deals come on the heels of many other impressive partnerships that were solidified during the last few months.
Raducanu has inked commercial deals with US jewelry company Tiffany’s and French fashion label Dior, both of which are reportedly worth UK£2 million (US$2.7 million), and more recently locked up a deal with Evian water to become a brand ambassador.
To put Raducanu’s explosion in perspective, the Brit was ranked 388 with just over 10,000 Instagram followers to her name. Just before Christmas, she now has over 2.1 million followers on Instagram.
On the tennis racquet and apparel side, Raducanu is sponsored by Nike and Wilson, on rolling one-year contracts, so we can expect a potential bidding war when those deals expire.
Naomi Osaka ($55.2 million) and Williams ($35.5 million) headlined the world’s highest-paid female athletes in 2021, with each earning over 90 percent of their total income from endorsement deals. Garbine Muguruza, who earned $4.5 million in 2021, was the only other tennis player in the top 10 Forbes list of the highest-paid female athletes. It will be interesting to see if Raducanu lands on that list in 2022.
At the moment, it is looking more and more like a lock.