Emma Raducanu is back on a Grand Slam stage after a year away with serious injuries and it means she can start phase two of her career in the full glare of the world’s cameras.
Since her breakthrough tournament at Wimbledon in 2021, when she reached the fourth round, Raducanu has been a huge star on the tennis stage.
When she backed up that run at the All England Club with a historic victory at the US Open a few months later, the young British player was catapulted to international stardom overnight.
Her success and potential to be a global sporting icon ensured some of the biggest companies in the world wanted to be associated with Raducanu, but injuries have sidelined her ambitions over the last year.
Before her opening match at the 2024 Australian Open, Raducanu had won 35 and lost 31 matches on the senior tour, with seven of her wins coming from her win at Flushing Meadows two and a half years ago.
Now she will be keen to build on that record as she heads into what she hopes will be a busy 2024 season
Here is what Raducanu’s success has been worth to her so far, as well as some key points behind a modern-day success story on and off the court.
HOW MUCH HAS RADUCANU EARNED SO FAR?
Her career prize money stands at $3,780,210, but much of that came from the $2.5million she collected from her sensational 2021 US Open win.
That financial windfall on the court has been dwarfed by her earnings off it.
Official figures for her deals with British Airways, Tiffany and Co, Porsche, Dior, British Airways, Tiffany & Co., Evian and HSBC, Nike and Wilson are believed to be worth in excess of $10million-per-year.
According to Forbes, Raducanu was the fourth-highest-paid female athlete in 2023 on both lists despite playing only 10 competitive matches during the year due to injury.
The 2021 US Open champion earned only $238k prize money while she made $15m from sponsorship deals for a total of $15.2m, according to Forbes.
WHAT RADUCANU SAYS ABOUT HER SPONSORS
“My partners have really backed me and supported me even in a year out. So anything that I can do to give back, give extra is really important to me,” she said earlier this month.
“Just being around them, you learn so much that I think you can apply to your own trade and your own industry. And just the quality control, almost perfectionism, the detail, the planning, everything.
“It’s like, ‘well, OK, people approach a project like this and how can I kind of take that mindset into tennis?’ Because I think a lot of the time on tour, it’s kind of ad hoc, you know, that’s the norm.
“But having a clear planning structure, it seems to work in other industries so applying it to my own was a good idea.”
WHAT RADUCANU’S AGENT SAYS – Max Eisenbud (IMG)
Raducanu has often been accused of allowing her sponsorship deals to distract her focus from tennis, but her agents insist he turns down ‘millions a year’ as the tennis star wants to ensure her priority is on the court.
“We could have done 50 days of shoots,” Eisenbud told the BBC Sports Desk podcast.
“I’ve never seen the amount of excitement and companies that wanted to be in business with Emma after the US Open.”
He doesn’t believe that her commercial commitments detracted from her ability on court at all in a tough 2022 season.
“I think she got a lot of bad luck and what really hurt her was [catching] Covid and not having a great off-season, and then she was playing catch up.
“But I think that if she had zero shoot dates, everything would be the same.
“I know from the outside, you guys want to look at all those things – but if she locked herself in the room for the whole year and didn’t do anything, I think it would be the same.”
Eisenbud also explained how Raducanu has strict rules in place to ensure sponsorship commitments do not impact on a tournament as he revealed when photo shoots and other commitments are permitted.
“Never a week or so before a tournament, never in a tournament week and never right after the tournament,” he added.
“I understand how people who don’t understand that philosophy could think that it is distracting her, but I think when you see how it’s laid out, it really is not the case.
“Emma decided that she wants to start her shoots at 12pm or 1pm and go until 8pm or 9pm and have the option in the morning to either train or work out or do some fitness.
“Not all the days have been used of the 18. There are sponsors that have those days, but many of them don’t use them.
“I would imagine by the end of the year the amount of days she uses will be around 13.
“But when the 19th day comes, and it’s millions of dollars and you have got to say ‘no’ because you’re being true to the 18 days – it’s tough.”
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