Serena Williams Heads Into Retirement As A Tennis Icon — And One Of America’s Richest Self-Made Women

Serena Williams acknowledged for the first time Tuesday that she was retiring from tennis, saying in a poignant as-told-to cover story in Vogue that she had made the difficult decision to give her family her full attention.

“Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family. I don’t think it’s fair,” wrote Williams, who didn’t specify exactly when she will hang up her racket but is set to play in the U.S. Open, which begins August 29. “If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family.”

Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam singles champion, expressed some frustration that she couldn’t solidify her claim as tennis’ greatest of all-time by passing Margaret Court’s record of 24 major titles. But she can take some solace in the fact that she has changed the game for female athletes financially.

Williams, who turns 41 next month, has earned $94.6 million in career prize money on the WTA Tour, more than double the next-best mark, the $42.3 million posted by her sister Venus. She has been even more successful off the court, earning more than $340 million (before taxes and agents’ fees) from endorsements, appearances and other business endeavors, according to Forbes estimates. In May, she landed at No. 31 in Forbes’ annual ranking of the world’s highest-paid athletes with $45.3 million—almost all of it from endorsements—despite having been sidelined by injuries for ten months.

Williams has more than a dozen corporate partners, and even as her playing schedule has dwindled, with no more than eight tournaments in a year since 2015, she has remained an inescapable presence on television screens, appearing in two separate Super Bowl commercials this year, for Michelob Ultra and Tonal. That has helped secure her a place on Forbes’ list of America’s richest self-made women, at No. 90 with an estimated net worth of $260 million. Maria Sharapova (No. 97, $220 million) is the only other athlete on the list.

Advertisers haven’t always given her her due. Sharapova outpaced her off the court for 11 straight years, for instance, even while Williams was piling up Grand Slams. But a late-career resurgence helped Williams end that streak in 2016, and there’s no arguing with her longevity. When Sharapova retired in 2020 at 32, she had earned roughly $290 million off the court, more than $50 million behind Williams’ career total. Williams’ marketing success has paved the way for a new generation in women’s sports, including fellow tennis champion Naomi Osaka, who ranked 19th on this year’s highest-paid athletes with $59.2 million, including $58 million off the court, a record for a female athlete.

Many of Williams’ endorsements are likely to continue into her retirement, just as Sharapova has continued to promote Nike, Evian and Porsche. But her attention has increasingly turned to investing, primarily through Serena Ventures. The firm, which she formally announced in 2019 and which focuses on early-stage companies, has investments in more than 60 startups and announced in March that it had raised an inaugural fund of $111 million. Williams wrote in her Vogue essay that the firm had funded 16 unicorns and noted that 78% percent of the companies in its portfolio had been founded by women and people of color.

She has plenty else to keep her busy after she leaves tennis, including a board seat with SurveyMonkey’s parent, Momentive, and a board advisor post with NFT company Sorare. Her first children’s book is due to be released next month, and she is expanding her sports assets, investing in NWSL expansion club Angel City FC in 2020 after buying a small stake in the NFL’s Miami Dolphins in 2009.

Williams, who won the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant with her daughter, Olympia, made clear in her essay that she wanted to focus on her family, writing that she and her husband, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, have been trying to have another child.

“I definitely don’t want to be pregnant again as an athlete,” she wrote. “I need to be two feet into tennis or two feet out.”

The tennis world will mourn her departure, but she has left an indelible mark.