Roger Federer has become the first tennis player to top Forbes’ list of the best-paid athletes in world sport as overall earnings dropped amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Swiss star was ranked first with earnings of 106million US dollars (£86.2million) thanks to an extensive portfolio of investments which brought in £81m – dwarfing his on-court earnings.
Federer ranked just ahead of Juventus star Cristiano Ronaldo, who Forbes said earned £85m, and Lionel Messi, third with £84m.
Paris St Germain’s Neymar was fourth, ahead of NBA stars LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant.
Tiger Woods was ranked eighth with NFL quarterbacks Kirk Cousins and Carson Wentz completing the top 10.
Boxer Tyson Fury was the highest-ranked Brit on the list in 11th place with earnings of £46.2m, while six-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton was 13th with £43.7m.
The highest paid female athlete, Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka, was 29th overall with earnings of £30.7m.
Forbes said the 100 highest-paid athletes in the world had collectively raked in £2.95bn over the past year, nine per cent down on the figure from 2019 as the postponement or cancellation of several events took a significant bite.
“The coronavirus pandemic triggered salary cuts for soccer stars Messi and Ronaldo, clearing the way for a tennis player to rank as the world’s highest-paid athlete for the first time,” said Kurt Badenhausen, a senior editor at Forbes.
“Roger Federer is the perfect pitchman for companies, resulting in an unparalleled endorsement portfolio of blue-chip brands worth 100 million US dollars a year for the tennis great.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here