Tennis superstars: Serena Williams’ other empire | United States of America

The term “retirement” does not appear in Serena Williams’ dictionary. “It’s not a recent word,” the 40-year-old American tennis player, 23-time Grand Slam champion, who announced on Tuesday that she would Her racket got hung up in a few weeks. After winning everything in her sport, the most successful female tennis player of the open era decided it was time to quit the sport. But she does not plan to lie on the sofa to live on her savings. As she explained in her statement published in Vogue magazineNow her goal is to expand her family to give her four-year-old daughter Olympia a brother or sister, and focus on her business ventures, where she has proven just as successful in the courts.

Since sweeping the US Open at the age of 17 in 1999, the youngest of five siblings, growing up in the Compton neighborhood of Los Angeles, has become an icon of her sport. She is now one of the most influential people in the United States. Her unparalleled tennis successes made Williams the highest-grossing female sprinter in history. For most of her career, she was the highest paid in the world. According to Forbes magazine, Serena Williams has a fortune of $260 million (nearly 255 million euros), which makes her the richest athlete of all time. Of that amount, $94.5 million came from her earnings on the WTA circuit. She is the tennis player who has earned the most money in history, ahead of her sister Venus, who earned nearly half the amount ($42.3 million).

Serena Williams is one of the greatest athletics personalities of all time, and the second-largest female tennis player with the most Grand Slams in history, after Margaret Court, who won 24 before the Open Era. Williams has used her tennis star to build a business empire, which she will dedicate entirely to once she retires from the WTA circuit, following the US Open that begins on August 29.

Many athletes, especially big stars, have Unrelated business Which often brings them greater benefits than success in competitions. Sponsorship is still a very important part of athletes’ income, but they are increasingly looking for ways to diversify. Footballer Cristiano Ronaldo owns a hotel chain and a hair transplant company. Golf star Tiger Woods founded an audiovisual production company for sports content. Racing driver Lewis Hamilton is promoting a project to manufacture electric racing cars. Like these heroes, Williams plunged into the world of business. She has currently developed initiatives in three areas: fashion, audiovisual production, and entrepreneurial investment.

Williams’ passion for tennis is matched only by her interest in fashion. After many collaborations with Nike, the tennis player launched her own line of women’s clothing in 2018 under the name S by Serena. On the online sales page, prices for his designs range from 30 euros to 250 euros. The following year, it expanded its offering and launched a line of jewelry under the same name. “Some people criticized my decision, but I knew I had two passions, tennis and fashion, and I had to find a way to get them to coexist,” Williams explained at the time.

The life of celebrities has also been shown on the big screen. In 2018, she presented the biographical documentary being serenathat won a PGA award. Last year, she made the leap to Hollywood. She produced the film with her sister, Venus King Richard, starring Will Smith as the father of tennis players. “The way Will plays my dad takes the movie to another level,” Serena said at the movie’s premiere. The Academy agreed to award Smith the statuette for Best Actor during an evening that ended in controversy due to The actor’s aggression against anchor Chris Rock.

The 23-time Grand Slam winner has another ambitious project on her hands: Serena Ventures, her entrepreneurial venture fund, which was founded in 2014. Her husband, Alexis Ohanian, the creator of Reddit, convinced her that creating her own venture fund would allow her to support the projects in which she was actively involved. The largest and career enhancement for women and African Americans in the United States. “I want to be in the infrastructure. She said in an interview with Forbes. In March of this year, it raised $110 million in seed funding for Serena Ventures, which currently funds more than 60 companies, most of which are run by women or blacks.

Serena Williams will be putting on the racket in the coming weeks to wear a business suit – certainly of her own design. But the greatest tennis player of the twenty-first century will not simply disappear. As she herself says, it is on the cusp of development.