Highest Paid Female Athletes: Shut Out of the Top 50

Coco Gauff earned an estimated $33 million — and did not make Forbes’ list of the 50 highest-paid athletes. Neither did any other woman, for the third consecutive year. More pay and earnings breakdowns are collected in our salaries and earnings hub.

Football’s equivalent question has a sharper answer: England’s women have had equal match fees since 2020, but the equalised figure is about £2,000 — see our guide to Lionesses pay.

The cut-off was $54.6 million.

Rank	Athlete	Estimated earnings	Sport
1	Coco Gauff	$33m	Tennis
2	Aryna Sabalenka	$30m	Tennis
3	Iga Świątek	$25.1m	Tennis

The gap is not marginal

Forbes’ overall top 50 was set at $54.6 million by the men’s tennis player Jannik Sinner, the fiftieth-highest earner. Gauff’s estimated $33 million falls roughly $21.6 million short of simply appearing on the list.

At the top the distance is larger again:

Athlete	Estimated earnings
Cristiano Ronaldo	$300m
Saúl ‘Canelo’ Álvarez	$170m
Lionel Messi	$140m
LeBron James	$137.8m
Coco Gauff (highest-paid woman)	$33m

Ronaldo, first for a fourth straight year, earned roughly nine times the highest-paid woman in sport.

All three are tennis players, and that is the story

The top of the women’s list is entirely tennis. That is not coincidence, and it says more about sporting structures than about the athletes.

Tennis is the only women’s sport that combines three things at scale: substantial prize money, equal pay at the Grand Slams, and a year-round global circuit that builds the individual profile endorsement deals are priced against. The US Open has paid men and women equally since 1973, as our guide to US Open prize money sets out.

Golf is the closest comparison and has no equivalent: the biggest women’s purse is $13 million against $22.5 million at the men’s majors, and 3.4 to 1 across the two seasons — see our guide to LPGA vs PGA prize money.

No women’s team sport currently produces earnings in that range. Which means the highest-paid women in sport are concentrated in one discipline, while the men’s list spans football, boxing, basketball, American football and golf.

Three-quarters of it is not prize money

The composition of Gauff’s earnings is the most revealing figure on this page. Of the estimated $33 million:

• $8 million — prize money
• $25 million — sponsorships, appearances, exhibitions and business interests

That is roughly 76% from off-court sources. Competition accounts for less than a quarter of what the highest-paid woman in sport earns.

The dependence matters because endorsement income is discretionary and personal. It is negotiated privately, can fall as quickly as it rises, and rewards marketability alongside results. A male team-sport athlete on a guaranteed multi-year contract has a floor that an endorsement-led income does not.

Where guaranteed money exists instead

Team leagues offer the security individual sport does not, at much lower ceilings.

The WNBA’s 2026 maximum is $1.4 million, with a $270,000 minimum and a projected average near $600,000 under its new collective bargaining agreement — covered in our guide to the highest paid WNBA players. Three players share that maximum.

So the choice facing elite women’s sport is stark: a capped but guaranteed salary in a team league, or an uncapped but discretionary income in an individual one. Gauff’s $33 million is roughly 24 times the WNBA maximum.

Why equal prize money has not closed it

Tennis pays equally at the majors and still produces this gap, which is the clearest evidence that purses are not the binding constraint.

The difference sits in broadcast revenue, team-sport salary pools and endorsement scale — all of which follow audience and commercial attention rather than tournament policy. Ronaldo’s $300 million is overwhelmingly commercial, not competitive. Equal prize money removes one inequality without touching the larger ones.

For context on how differently sports pay their participants at all, see our guides to F1 prize money, where drivers receive none of the $1.25 billion pool, and highest paid football managers.

How we checked these numbers

The absence of women from the 2026 top 50 for a third straight year, the $54.6 million cut-off set by Jannik Sinner, and the men’s leading figures for Ronaldo, Álvarez, Messi and James are from Forbes’ 2026 list and its accompanying analysis, corroborated by Sportico. Gauff’s $33 million with its $8 million / $25 million split, Sabalenka’s $30 million and Świątek’s $25.1 million are from Forbes’ most recent women’s ranking.

All Forbes athlete earnings are estimates, combining salary or prize money with modelled off-field income. They are the most widely used figures in the field but they are not disclosed accounts, and the endorsement component in particular is inferred. The 76% off-court proportion is our own calculation from Forbes’ published split.

For narrower pay tables, compare the top 20 WNBA salaries, the highest NIL deals, and the highest-paid NHL players.

Review class: seasonal. Forbes publishes annually — recheck when the next list appears, and when the women’s ranking is updated.