A month after Serena Williams announced she would retire, another tennis legend is ready to hang up his racket. Roger Federer said Thursday that next week’s Laver Cup—a team tournament he co-founded in would be his final professional event.
Federer, 41, will leave behind an incredible legacy on the court but however he stands in the eternal comparison with his longtime rivals Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, he is without a doubt tennis’ all-time financial champion.
That success landed Federer at No. 7 on Forbes’ 2022 list of the world’s highest-paid athletes even though he won only about $700,000 in prize money during that time. He was the world’s highest-paid athlete on the 2020 list with a total of $106.3 million and has ranked as the highest-paid tennis player for 17 straight years.
Federer’s career earnings total of $1.1 billion before taxes and agents’ fees is more than twice Nadal’s $500 million and Djokovic’s $470 million, according to Forbes estimates. It also makes him one of just seven athletes across sports—alongside LeBron James, Floyd Mayweather, Lionel Messi, Phil Mickelson, Cristiano Ronaldo and TigerWoods—to have surpassed $1 billion while still active.
Federer has long-term endorsement deals with over a dozen brands, and many of them have stuck with him for more than a decade, including Credit Suisse, Lindt, Mercedes and Rolex. In 2018, he left Nike, which had paid him roughly $150 million over the course of two decades, to sign an apparel deal with Uniqlo reportedly worth up to $300million over ten years. When he was healthy, Federer could also command $2 million per event to play in exhibitions and smaller tournaments.
Federer said he would “play more tennis in the future, of course, but just not in Grand Slams or on the tour.” But even if he steps away from the sport entirely, he should be able to count on several of his sponsorships continuing into retirement. Maria Sharapova, for instance, has continued to promote Nike, Evian and Porsche since leaving the game in 2020.
To be sure, Federer has eclipsed Sharapova and just about every other tennis pro with his on-the-court accomplishments: 20 Grand Slam singles titles, including a record 8 at Wimbledon; 310 weeks as the ATP Tour’s top-ranked player, including a record 237 in a row; and 103 ATP singles titles, the second-most after Jimmy Connors’ 109.
“It’s incredible that this wonderful company is headquartered so close to where I live,” Federer told Forbes in 2021. “Because the pandemic forced me to be home so much for the last 18 months, I have had the opportunity to work with them much more than in normal times.”