Serena Williams enters her final U.S. Open as a long shot to take home the trophy but her title as the biggest earner in the history of women's tennis will remain for many years to come.
"It's hard to overstate her success," Victor Matheson, a sports economist at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, said of the 23-time Grand Slam champion.Put another way, about 25,000 women have won prize money in the history of the WTA and Serena Williams has earned more than the bottom 80 per cent of those players combined, he said.
In 1995, the WTA handed out $35 million in total prize money, an amount that jumped to $180 million in 2020, said Bob Dorfman, Sports Marketing Analyst at San Francisco's Pinnacle Advertising.