Sindhu 13th on Forbes list with $5.5m earnings

New York, August 7 

India’s badminton star PV Sindhu is the only athlete from the country to be named among the world’s highest-paid female athletes by Forbes, a list topped by tennis great Serena Willams.

With total earnings of $5.5 million, Sindhu is tied for the 13th place in the Highest-Paid Female Athletes 2019 list released by Forbes on Tuesday. “Sindhu remains India’s most marketable female athlete…. She became the first Indian to win the season-ending BWF World Tour finals in 2018,” Forbes said.

The list of the world’s top-15 female athletes is topped by Williams, with total earnings of $29.2 million. Forbes said Williams, 37, plans to play through at least next year but is already planning her next act with a clothing line, ‘S by Serena’, and designs to launch jewellery and beauty products lines by the end of 2020. She also has built a venture portfolio worth more than $10 million. 

On the second spot is Naomi Osaka, who won the US Open last year and the Australian Open in January. She has total earnings of $24.3 million.

Forbes said its earnings tally looks at prize money, salaries, bonuses, endorsements and appearance fees between June 2018 and 2019. There are 15 female athletes who made at least $5 million during that time period; for comparison roughly 1,300 male athletes will hit that mark this year.

The top 15 earned a cumulative $146 million, compared with $130 million last year. 

Williams and Osaka both earned more than twice as much as the third-highest-paid female athlete in the world, Angelique Kerber, who pulled in $11.8 million from tennis. — PTI