Only 2 of the 100 highest-paid athletes on the planet are women

• Forbes has released its annual rankings of the world's highest-paid athletes for 2020.
• Of the 100 sports superstars featured on the list, only two are women.
• Serena Williams, who was the only woman to break into the top 100 in 2019, ranks 33rd on the list with $36 million in total earnings.
• Japanese tennis star Naomi Osaka overtook Williams as the highest-paid female athlete with $37.4 million in earnings.

Each year, Forbes releases the definitive list of the highest-paid athletes on the planet.

And this year, only two of the 100 top earners in sports are women.

American tennis icon Serena Williams — who has long been one of the sole women to appear in Forbes' annual rankings — checked in at No. 33 on this year's list. And even though the 23-time Grand Slam champion was the only woman in 2019's top-100 highest-paid athletes, she was not the top-earning female on the 2020 list.

Naomi Osaka — the Japanese tennis superstar who burst on the scene after beating Williams in the controversial 2018 US Open final — was ranked world No. 1 for much of last year and has subsequently become the highest-paid female athlete in the world for 2020. She raked in $3.4 million in tournament winnings, and an additional $34 million from endorsement deals with Nike, Nissan, MasterCard, Procter & Gamble, All Nippon Airways, Nissin, and many more corporations.

With $37.4 million in total earnings this year, the 22-year-old now ranks 29th on Forbes' list of highest-earning athletes for the year and, according to the publication, is the all-time highest-paid female athlete in a single year.

It's little surprise that tennis stars are the female athletes who have traditionally broken into the top 100. Since the days of Billie Jean King's reign, tennis has led the sports world in gender equity. But even despite setting a record in total earnings for women's athletics, Osaka earned nearly three times less than fellow tennis star Roger Federer, who topped the 2020 highest-earners list with a whopping $106.3 million.

Women's sports teams and leagues have garnered increased viewership and interest across the globe in recent years. Still, the increased engagement has not yet translated to individual financial success on par with their male counterparts.

Osaka's feat is emblematic of her meteoric rise in the world of sports. Her top-10 WTA ranking makes her an attractive marketing target, in and of itself. However, her decision to forgo her United States citizenship to compete for Japan in the upcoming Tokyo Olympics helped her brand value skyrocket.

"To those outside the tennis world, Osaka is a relatively fresh face with a great back story," David Carter, a sports business professor at USC's Marshall School of Business, told Forbes. "Combine that with being youthful and bicultural, two attributes that help her resonate with younger, global audiences, and the result is the emergence of a global sports marketing icon."

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