Women’s Tennis Cashing In On Sex Appeal

By Mark Hoerrner

Sharapova. Williams. Williams again. Kournikova. The names are so synonymous with glitz and glamour that they are almost removed entirely from the sport in which the women proved themselves as stalwart competitors. For years, they toiled in a sport that paid women less than men on a regular basis. Now, however, the women have found a way to use their natural appeal and charisma to outpace men in their earnings.

There are those who criticize the "glam appeal" of the women’s tennis tour, but women’s prizes have traditionally been considerably lower than on the men’s tour. The Sony Ericsson WTA Tour will pay out $58.7 million, whereas the men’s tour will pay out $80 million. So the women are finding new ways of capitalizing on a marketing product that sells better than their athletic ability: sex.

"I think its all in the execution," said Sports Illustrated’s Jon Wertheim. "In some ways facts are facts and the tour certainly hasn’t shied away from playing up the glam factor. But when it starts to undercut the credibility of the product, it becomes a problem. There are other players that want nothing to do with this."

The proof is in the endorsements. Maria Sharapova recently inked a deal that could be worth as much as $100 million dollars over ten years, according to an article in Tennis Life magazine. The Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, make a combined $20 million a year. Anna Kournikova reportedly earns about $12 million a year.

And that’s without Kournikova winning a single title. Some pro tour players, however, don’t get the treatment that glam personas like Kournikova receive.

"It’s been one of these issues that the tour has wrestled with for years now," Wertheim said. "Are they doing this tastefully? I think with a player like Sharapova, she can pull it off. She’s a teenager, she’s 6’2", she’s blonde. Maria Sharapova knows the economics.

"When Lindsay Davenport was at the height of her power, she wasn’t making $25 million in off-court income and there’s a reason for that."

Wertheim notes that regardless of the off-court endorsements, the Venus and Serena Williams are still top competitors.

"The one thing about the Williams sisters," he said, "to their credit, is that they are winning major titles."

The women may be finding that their off-court appeal is drawing big money, but the on-court competitions have been growing in popularity. The TV ratings for women’s matches are outpacing the men. The shorter matches of the women fit better into the television schedules and are easier to show.

At the Nasdaq 100 Open this past spring, women’s and men’s competitions drew the same number of television viewers. That number, however, was a 50 percent leap up from last year for the women compared to only a 25 percent increase in men’s viewership, according to the Nasdaq 100 web site.

Still, the women have a long way to go. While the Williams sisters generally garner the highest endorsements which parallel the paydays of marquee stars like basketball players Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, they still lag far behind golf’s Tiger Woods who, according to ESPN, pulls in $60 million annually from endorsements.