Novak Djokovic and Naomi Osaka are the reigning champions at back-to-back Grand Slam events after titles at the U.S. Open in September and Australian Open in January. It’s been nearly a quarter century since a man and a woman repeated at the same Slam event; Pete Sampras and Steffi Graf were the last to pull it off in 1995.
IMG is not resting on its laurels, as it looks to make further inroads into the fertile Asian market. “You might have 10 Chinese women in the top 100 in the next five or six years,” says Max Eisenbud, who runs the client division of IMG Tennis and has overseen the careers of Sharapova and Li Na. The seeds of IMG in Asia trace back 50 years, and its recent experience in Asia with Li and Nishikori helped paved the way for Osaka’s marketing surge.
She has signed a slew of new endorsement deals since the Open win, including All Nippon Airways, Procter & Gamble, Nissan and Shiseido . A new apparel deal is expected next month, and Osaka will be the highest-paid female athlete on the planet by the time of the Tokyo Olympics next year. “We were fortunate to have a very sophisticated office in Tokyo that already had the experience with Kei,” says Eisenbud. “The relationships in that region are important.