Emma Raducanu earns £18m to enter Forbes’ tennis money list

Emma Raducanu has shot into the top 10 highest-paid tennis players in the world in the year since her US Open triumph.

According to the annual list of both on-court and off-court earnings published by Forbes, Raducanu received $21.1 million (£18m) during the 12 months since her stunning and unexpected grand slam triumph in New York.

It is enough to make Raducanu the third highest-paid women’s tennis player in the world, behind only the four-time grand slam champion Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams, who is expected to call time on her career following this month’s US Open.

Raducanu won around $2.5m in prize money for winning the US Open last year, in which she went from a virtually unknown qualifier ranked 150th to becoming the first British woman in 44 years to win a grand slam singles title.

The 19-year-old shot to fame overnight after defeating Leylah Fernandez in last year’s final and has added sponsorship deals with British Airways, Porsche, Dior, Evian and Tiffany to her existing partnership with Nike.

Raducanu’s off-court earnings accounted for around $18m while Osaka received over $50m and Williams made $35m, according to Forbes.

Roger Federer retained his place at the top of the list for the 17th year, despite not playing a match in 2022. Federer’s earnings of $90m significantly led those of Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, who completed the top five above Raducanu.

The men’s US Open champion Daniil Medvedev, Venus Williams, Japan’s Kei Nishikori and Carlos Alcaraz - the second teenager alongside Raducanu to make the list - completed the top 10.

Raducanu will defend her US Open title in New York this week and has drawn Alize Cornet in the first round. The British No 1’s debut season on the WTA Tour has been impacted by injuries, while Raducanu has also faced questions over her coaching set-up, as well as the number of sponsorship deals she has signed in the past year.

Responding to suggestions that her commercial commitments were a distraction to her tennis, Raducanu said back in March. “Maybe you just see, on the news or on social media, me signing this or that deal and I feel like it’s quite misleading because I’m doing five, six hours a day (of training), I’m at the club for 12 hours a day.

“But I throw out one post in the car on the way to practice and all of a sudden it’s ‘I don’t focus on tennis’. I think that it is unfair but it’s something I have learned to deal with and become a bit more insensitive to the outside noise.

“At the end of the day, I feel like my days (with sponsors) are pretty limited. I’m not doing crazy days. I’m doing three, four days every quarter, so it’s really not that much.”