Popular WTA Players and their Endorsements: Part III
Maria Sharapova
Former World Number 1 Maria Sharapova is a Russian professional tennis player. She has won 22 WTA singles titles, and her Grand Slam titles consist of the 2008 Australian Open, the 2006 US Open and the 2004 Wimbledon Championships. Like Serena Williams,
Sharapova is an exemplary player who was unable to exercise her full potential due to many injuries throughout her career. She has been unable to recover from a shoulder injury in 2004, and is no longer considered a major contender for Grand Slams.
Despite this, Maria Sharapova is still one of the most popular tennis players. This can be attributed to her physical appearance as well as to her game, and it has enabled her to secure commercial endorsements and deals with many companies. Her earnings
from these contracts exceed her tournament winnings by far.
As far as tennis equipment is concerned, Maria Sharapova used Prince racquets for the majority of her career, although her contract ended in 2010. In 2003, she used the Prince Triple Threat Hornet for a short time. She then switched between many Prince models,
until the US Open where she used the Prince Shark OS. She also featured heavily in the production of the Shark line. After this, she began using the Prince 03 White racquet in the beginning of 2006. In 2008, her shoulder injuries forced her to begin using
the Prince O3 Speedport Black. Where racquets are concerned, she gifted her 2008 Wimbledon final Prince equipment to Regis Philbin during the filming of Live With Regis and Kelly.
This year, she will begin endorsing Head racquets, with her first choice being the Head YOUTEK Radical Midplus.
Sharapova has also signed sponsorships with Tropicana and Gatorade, and she was listed by Forbes as the most highly paid female athlete in the world. The majority of her income is from her endorsement deals; when asked about this, she quipped, “It's never
enough. Bring on the money. There's no limit to how much you can make.”
Maria Sharapova was also featured in a number of commercials for Canon USA’s Powershot camera, in 2007. In addition to this she has been depicted as a character in many tennis-relevant video games, such as Grand Slam tennis, Top Spin series and Virtua Tennis
series.
One of her most lucrative endorsements is with Nike. In early 2010, the company announced that Maria Sharapova had signed an 8 year long deal with the company for a total of seventy million US dollars. With this contract, Sharapova beat the record for highest
earning endorsement for a female athlete; the previous holder of this record was Venus Williams, with her forty-three million dollar contract with Reebok.
FHM, a British magazine, ranked her as the seventh most eligible bachelorette on the basis of her wealth and looks. In the middle of last year, Forbes magazine named Maria Sharapova as the most highly-paid female athelete in the world, with a total yearly
income of 24.5 million dollars.
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