Maria Sharapova, the world’s best- paid female athlete, may drop some sponsors in favor of agreements that give the three-time tennis Grand Slam champion a percentage of sales, her agent said.
“She has wealth,” Max Eisenbud, vice president of IMG Tennis, said in an interview yesterday in New York. “She wants to focus on deals where she has equity in, where she helps designing, gets a percentage of the sales.”
Sharapova, 22, has made about $22 million in prize money and from endorsing companies including Tiffany & Co., Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd. and Cannon Inc., according to Sports Illustrated. The Russian was the only woman in the magazine’s July list of the top 20 highest-earning non-U.S. athletes.
Sharapova, who has nine sponsors, last year didn’t renew a 2007 agreement with PepsiCo Inc.’s Gatorade sports drink and Tropicana fruit juice brand. She instead extended a deal with U.S. clothing, shoe, handbag and accessory designer Cole Haan because it gave her the opportunity to be involved in design, Eisenbud said.
“Gatorade and Cole Haan came up at the same time,” he said. “We couldn’t do both, so we had to make a choice. The focus now is on deals that she can develop after her career.”
The 6-foot-2 (1.88 meter) Sharapova introduced her Maria Sharapova by Cole Haan collection last week in New York. Cole Haan is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nike Inc., Sharapova’s apparel sponsor.
“Hours and hours in off-court time is spent designing,” Eisenbud said. “She’s doing Nike dresses into 2011 now.”
Gehry Inspiration
She’s also been a muse to architect Frank Gehry, who designed earrings for Tiffany that Sharapova is wearing at the U.S. Open, where she made a successful return last night by beating Tsvetana Pironkova of Bulgaria in the first round.
“I went to his studio a little bit ago,” Sharapova said of her visit to Gehry’s Santa Monica base. “A little part of each table had just things thrown together or papers thrown together in a certain way. In the middle of it all he had some ideas for some earrings that I was going to wear at the U.S. Open. It was completely crazy.”
Wearing a Nike navy blue dress with silver color blocks and her Gehry-designed earrings, Sharapova eased past Pironkova 6-3, 6-0 in 73 minutes at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Sharapova, the 2006 champion in New York, missed last year’s tournament because of a right shoulder injury that sidelined her for almost 10 months.
“Being out almost a whole year, it’s all worth it when you step on the court, you hear all the cheering and feel the atmosphere,” Sharapova said. “You forget what you are doing it all for but when you feel this you remember.”
(Source: Bloomberg)
