For the past year, tennis has been dominated by the on-court battle between 24-year-old Jannik Sinner of Italy and 22-year-old Carlos Alcaraz of Spain, who have combined for all four Grand Slam singles championships in that span—plus another eight ATP Tour titles along the way. Now, the rivalry is taking a financial turn.
For the second straight year, Alcaraz is the world’s highest-paid tennis player, retaining the top spot with an estimated $48.3 million over the past 12 months before taxes and agent fees—up from the $42.3 million he posted the year prior. But Sinner has narrowed the gap, collecting an estimated $47.3 million dating to the 2024 U.S. Open in a significant jump from his $26.6 million the previous year.
On the court, Sinner has the edge with $20.3 million, a figure that has been surpassed only by Novak Djokovic in the 18 editions of Forbes’ annual tennis earnings list. (The 38-year-old Serb hauled in $21.8 million over the 12 months ending in June 2016 and $20.6 million on the 2019 list.) But Alcaraz is tennis’ off-court king, with estimated earnings of $35 million from endorsements, appearances, exhibitions and other business endeavors.
Coming in at No. 3 overall, and first among women’s players, is Coco Gauff, also the world’s highest-paid female athlete across all sports last year. The 21-year-old American raked in an estimated $37.2 million over the past 12 months—$12.2 million in prize money and $25 million off the court—to vault past Djokovic, who lands at No. 4 overall with $29.6 million.
The shakeup means the earnings ranking is headed by three players under 30 for the first time since a young Roger Federer, Maria Sharapova and Rafael Nadal led the list in 2010. (Federer reigned atop the ranking until his retirement at age 41 in 2022, and Djokovic briefly claimed the throne in 2023 before ceding it to Alcaraz.)
Combined, the world’s 10 highest-paid tennis players made an estimated $285 million over the past 12 months, a 16% increase from last year’s total of $246 million.
That sum is still nowhere near the record of $343 million, set in 2020. But the difference largely comes down to the absence of Federer, who put up $106.3 million by himself that year, not to mention the now-retired Nadal ($40 million in 2020) and Serena Williams ($36 million). Digging deeper into the numbers, there are some positive signs.
For starters, Djokovic is the only member of this year’s top 10 who is older than 29, and the average age of the list now stands at 26, having dropped more than three years since 2020. And the sport’s rising stars remain on an upward trajectory, including Alcaraz, whose $48.3 million total is the best figure ever by a player not named Federer, Djokovic or Naomi Osaka—surpassing Nadal’s $44.5 million peak from 2014.
Men’s stars can further bolster their earnings through the ATP’s profit-sharing system, which was introduced in 2022 as part of the tour’s OneVision initiative. The tour recently announced that it was distributing $18.3 million to players based on their performance at 2024’s ATP Masters 1000 tournaments, the top nine events below the Grand Slams and the year-end championships. The bonus pool nearly triples the $6.6 million disbursed for 2023.
On the women’s side, Gauff’s paychecks are keeping her out in front, but her rivals are making up ground. Aryna Sabalenka, the top-ranked women’s player, has climbed to $27.4 million in total earnings, and $15 million from endorsements and appearances, bringing her in line off the court with her Polish rival Iga Swiatek as the Belarusian star overcomes marketers’ hesitation around players hailing from countries involved in the Russia-Ukraine war.
China’s Qinwen Zheng is experiencing an even more dramatic rise off the court, pulling in an estimated $21 million over the past 12 months. Many around the sport believe the 22-year-old could follow in the footsteps of Li Na, who won the country’s first two Grand Slam titles and hauled in an estimated $18 million off the court in 2014 ($24 million adjusted for inflation).
This year’s top 10 earners feature four women in all, with tennis representing the only major sport where income is comparable for male and female athletes. Still, prize money disparities have persisted at many tournaments below the four Grand Slams, leading the WTA Tour to announce plans in 2023 to equalize purses at 500- and 1000-level events over the next decade. This year, the Charleston Open committed to providing equal prize money for men and women in 2026 while Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association, which oversees the HSBC Championships and the Eastbourne Open, made the same promise for 2029.
Tennis may never again see a player quite like Federer—just the seventh high-level athlete ever to become a billionaire—but today’s stars are acing their financial opportunities.
The Highest-Paid Tennis Players 2025
Jannik Sinner may hold the No. 1 spot in the men’s singles rankings, but Alcaraz has come out on top in six of their past seven head-to-head matches on the ATP Tour, including a comeback victory at the French Open in June that gave the 22-year-old Spaniard his fifth Grand Slam title. With partnerships including BMW, Louis Vuitton and Rolex, Alcaraz is the top pitchman among active tennis players, but his real advantage over the field comes with appearances: He can command $1 million per event, and as much as $2 million for an exhibition. Alcaraz was also the subject of a three-episode Netflix documentary that chronicled his 2024 season. He teased the release date with a temporary tattoo reading “23-4-25” on his right arm at the Indian Wells tournament in March.
An unspecified illness forced Sinner to retire from the Cincinnati Open final this month against Carlos Alcaraz, and he also ended up withdrawing from the U.S. Open mixed doubles event this week. Still, heading into the Open’s singles tournament, the 24-year-old Italian remains the betting favorite to repeat as champion in New York and claim his fifth career major. A victory would extend Sinner’s roller-coaster year, with titles at the Australian Open and Wimbledon but also a three-month doping suspension after he tested positive for an anabolic steroid in March 2024. The International Tennis Integrity Agency had found Sinner was not to blame, accepting his explanation that Clostebol had entered his system through a massage from his physiotherapist, but the World Anti-Doping Agency appealed that decision and eventually reached a settlement with Sinner in February. Ultimately, the break has not slowed Sinner’s ascent: He has retained the No. 1 ranking in men’s singles, and his stable of roughly a dozen sponsors—including Gucci, Lavazza coffee and De Cecco pasta—has stood by him. He also captured the $6 million prize in October at the Six Kings Slam, an exhibition tournament in Saudi Arabia.
Gauff’s tennis has been uneven this year—after claiming her second Grand Slam singles title at the French Open, for instance, she lost her opening match at Wimbledon—and she fired her coach Matthew Daly days before the U.S. Open while bringing in a biomechanics specialist, Gavin MacMillan. The 21-year-old American is flying high off the court, however. In addition to a lucrative set of sponsors that include Bose, New Balance and hair care brand Carol’s Daughter, Gauff announced in January that she had invested in Unrivaled, ahead of the three-on-three women’s basketball league’s inaugural season. “My dad always wanted me to follow in his footsteps and play basketball,” she wrote on X. “Haha sorry dad but this is as close as it will get.” In April, Gauff also revealed that she was leaving her agency, Team8, to launch her own management firm in partnership with powerhouse talent firm WME, writing on social media that the venture “allows me to take greater ownership of my career while also creating opportunities that extend beyond myself as I continue to grow as an athlete, entrepreneur and changemaker.”
For Djokovic to extend his record for Grand Slam singles titles to 25 at this U.S. Open, he will have to knock off a bit of rust. The 38-year-old Serb sat out the Toronto Masters with a groin injury and withdrew from the Cincinnati Open this month for a “non-medical” reason, meaning he has not played a competitive singles match since his loss to Jannik Sinner in the Wimbledon semifinals in July. But even with Djokovic down to No. 7 in the men’s rankings and May’s Geneva Open representing his only ATP title in two seasons (alongside his gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics), never count him out in New York, where he triumphed two years ago and has won four titles in all. Off the court, Djokovic has added partnerships with Aman Resorts, Joe & The Juice and Qatar Airways over the past year, and in March, the Professional Tennis Players Association—the organization he cofounded in 2019—filed an antitrust lawsuit against the ATP and WTA Tours, the International Tennis Federation and the International Tennis Integrity Agency. The suit accused the governing bodies of acting as a cartel and suppressing wages, and the following month, Djokovic was also among the 20 star players who signed a letter addressed to the four Grand Slam tournaments seeking more prize money and greater decision-making power.
In July, Sabalenka became the first woman to surpass 12,000 points in the singles rankings since Serena Williams in 2015. But despite her dominance, the 27-year-old Belarusian doesn’t always play to a packed house. After a French Open quarterfinal that started at 11 a.m. with much of the stadium unoccupied, Sabalenka called for more night matches for women, joining a chorus of players who have spoken up on the issue, including Coco Gauff, Ons Jabeur and Jessica Pegula. (To Sabalenka’s point, a total of four women’s singles matches at Roland-Garros had been featured in prime time over five years.) Sabalenka is starting to get more attention from marketers, however. She announced a partnership with Electrolit sports drinks this month and has been filming content for Chase Bank and Russian YouTube channel First&Red. She also recently picked up an equity stake in IM8, a nutritional supplement brand cofounded by David Beckham.
After her gold-medal run at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Zheng cemented her status as a rising star by reaching the title match at the WTA Finals in November, falling to Coco Gauff in a third-set tiebreak. Already beloved by brands in her native China, which just unveiled a plan to develop tennis across the country, Zheng has recently expanded her sponsor portfolio with Audi, Beats and Dior, and as part of a WTA Tour ad campaign that began in the spring, she is being promoted as one of the faces of women’s tennis alongside Gauff, Naomi Osaka and Aryna Sabalenka. But Zheng will be out of the spotlight for at least a few weeks as she recovers from arthroscopic elbow surgery performed in July.
Like Jannik Sinner, Swiatek served a brief suspension—one month in her case—for an inadvertent doping violation last year. (Swiatek blamed melatonin she had been taking for jet lag.) Also like Sinner, Swiatek has seen minimal impact on her business, with her partner Oshee, a Polish sports drink brand, in fact upgrading its sponsorship in March to feature its logo on her shirt during matches. Swiatek had another big win at Wimbledon in July, when she routed Amanda Anisimova, 6-0, 6-0, to claim her sixth Grand Slam title and become the only active women’s player with a major championship on all three surfaces. Swiatek is also the betting favorite at the U.S. Open—a tournament she won three years ago—after prevailing at the Cincinnati Open this month.
Fritz reached the championship match at the ATP Finals in November—the first American to do so at the year-end tournament since James Blake in 2006—and he has spent most of the last eight months as the world’s No. 4 player, becoming the first American man to reach such a lofty singles ranking since Andy Roddick in 2007. (For context on just how long ago that was, Novak Djokovic had not yet won the first of his 24 Grand Slam titles.) Now, Fritz will try to improve on his run to last year’s U.S. Open final and win the whole thing, which would make him the first American man to triumph at the tournament since Roddick in 2003. Off the court, Fritz’s partners include Boss, Chipotle and Motorola.
Tiafoe was forced to retire from his fourth-round match at the Cincinnati Open this month because of a lower back injury, another disappointment in a frustrating year, but the U.S. Open could be just what the 27-year-old American needs. His best results at a Grand Slam have come in New York, with semifinal appearances in 2022 and 2024. Tiafoe will also have a new look on court this year, after signing an apparel sponsorship in January with Lululemon—becoming one in a string of prominent players who have ditched traditional outfitters like Nike and Adidas in favor of a partnership with a tennis upstart.
Struggles with his form have dropped Medvedev out of the top 10 in the world rankings for the first time since February 2023—he currently sits at No. 13—and while he pocketed more than $120,000 for reaching the second round at the Australian Open in January, he had to pay back more than half of that money in fines. During a five-set loss to 19-year-old qualifier Learner Tien, Medvedev threw his racket and smashed a net camera, and he then skipped a mandatory post-match press conference. But his fiery presence on the court—and goofy persona off it—have made Medvedev a fan favorite. “I always say it’s like when you’re driving on the road,” he recently told the BBC. “When people honk on the road, that’s my outburst on the court.” Away from tennis, Medvedev works with brands including Bovet watches and Lacoste, as well as serving as an ambassador for the video game Rainbow Six Siege X.
On-court earnings figures, which are rounded to the nearest $100,000, reflect prize money collected over the last 12 months, dating to the 2024 U.S. Open, as well as player payouts from the ATP Tour’s Masters 1000 profit-sharing program. Off-court earnings estimates, which are rounded to the nearest $1 million, are determined through conversations with industry insiders and reflect income from endorsements, appearances and exhibitions, licensing and memorabilia, as well as cash returns from any businesses in which the athlete has a significant interest.
The list includes athletes active during the 12-month time period. Venus Williams was excluded because of her limited schedule, with just two tournaments played so far this year and a total of four over the past two years.
Forbes does not include investment income such as interest payments or dividends but does account for payouts from equity stakes athletes have sold. Forbes does not deduct for taxes or agents’ fees.