Why Women Are Still Missing From the 100 Highest Paid Athletes List

And Why Platforms Like Ardsley Are Essential to Changing That - Join us:

www.ardsley.org

Each year, the list of the world’s 100 highest paid athletes is released. And each year, it delivers the same outcome.

No women.

Not one.

Despite historic growth in women’s sports viewership, participation, and cultural relevance, women athletes continue to be excluded from the highest earning tiers of professional sports. This is not a talent issue. It is not a performance issue. It is a structural issue.

Women are selling out stadiums. Women are driving television ratings. Women are building loyal global fan bases. Yet when it comes to athlete compensation at the top end, the gap remains entrenched.

Trinity Rodman: A Historic Contract in Women’s Soccer

In January 2026, USWNT star Trinity Rodman signed a groundbreaking three-year contract with the Washington Spirit that makes her the highest-paid women’s soccer player in the world, with reported annual earnings of over $2 million including bonuses.

Rodman’s deal surpasses that of previous women’s football earnings leaders like Barcelona midfielder Aitana Bonmatí, and marks a milestone in professional women’s soccer compensation.

While this contract is historic for the sport, it still illustrates the vast disparity in earnings when compared with the broader world of elite athlete compensation.

How Rodman’s Earnings Compare With the Highest Paid Female Athletes

Even as one of the highest-paid players in her sport, Rodman’s approximate $2 million per year remains far below the top female athletes across all sports.

For example, Forbes’ 2025 list of the highest-paid female athletes shows:

• Coco Gauff – approx. $33 million

• Aryna Sabalenka – $30 million

• Iga Swiatek – $25.1 million

• Eileen Gu – $23.1 million…and several others earning more than $10 million annually through a combination of prize money and endorsements.

  
  

This highlights how much greater visibility and endorsement opportunities in some women’s sports (like tennis) have unlocked higher earnings that remain rare in team sports such as soccer and basketball.

The Pay Gap Between Women and Men at the Top

Despite gains, the gap between the highest-paid female athletes, even stars like Gauff, is still enormous compared with men who make the top 100 overall highest paid athletes list.

According to Forbes’ most recent global earnings data, the cutoff to make the top 100 highest paid athletes was over $53.6 million, far above the highest female earnings.

In plain terms:

• The highest paid female athletes often earn tens of millions a year.

• But even those earnings fall short of the lowest male athlete on the top 100 list by millions of dollars.

  
  

Women like Rodman are breaking new ground within their leagues and sports, but the macro-level earnings gap remains vast, a reminder that structural inequities still shape who gets paid most in global sport.

What the Absence of Women on the Top 100 List Really Means

The lack of women on the highest paid athletes list isn’t about talent or demand. It reflects how the sports economy has historically been built.

Athlete earnings at the highest levels are driven by sponsorship and endorsement deals, media coverage and broadcast investment, brand storytelling and visibility, and access to long-term capital and investment.

Men’s sports have been developed with these systems fully operational. Women’s sports have not. The result: women athletes are often required to prove their value repeatedly with fewer resources and less exposure, creating a cycle where limited coverage leads to fewer sponsorship opportunities, which leads to lower pay, which is then used to justify continued underinvestment.

Breaking this cycle requires intention and infrastructure, not patience.

Why Growth in Women’s Sports Requires Investment, Not Optimism

Women’s sports are growing. Attendance is up. Media interest is rising. Participation rates continue to climb. But growth does not sustain itself without systems that support it.

Athletes at the top of the pay scale are not just elite competitors. They are brands, businesses, and cultural figures with teams and platforms behind them.

For women athletes to reach comparable earning potential, the ecosystem must evolve. That means more brand partnerships that extend beyond one-off campaigns, greater ownership of personal narratives and audiences, more businesses that treat women’s sports as a primary market rather than a niche, and long-term investment at the community and consumer level.

This is where platforms like Ardsley play a critical role.

Ardsley’s Perspective on Closing the Women’s Sports Pay Gap

Ardsley exists because women in sport deserve systems designed specifically for them.

As a women-only sporting goods platform, Ardsley centers women as primary consumers and economic drivers of sport. Our mission goes beyond retail. We are building infrastructure that supports women athletes, women-led brands, and women-driven communities.

Ardsley creates opportunities by showcasing women athletes and creators, partnering with brands committed to investing in women’s sports, hosting pop ups and events that increase visibility and engagement, and building a marketplace that turns participation into economic power.

Economic equity in sport does not start at the professional level. It starts earlier, in communities, consumer behavior, and brand ecosystems.

When women are prioritized as athletes, customers, and decision makers, spending power grows. Sponsorship follows. Media investment increases. Compensation eventually reflects reality.

Visibility Is Currency in Modern Sports

One of the most important drivers of athlete pay is visibility, not fleeting viral moments, but consistent presence and storytelling.

Platforms like Ardsley help create that visibility by amplifying women athletes through real-world activations, building direct connections between athletes and consumers, supporting women owned and women led sports brands, and normalizing women’s sports as everyday sport.

Visibility builds familiarity. Familiarity builds loyalty. Loyalty builds economic value. And economic value is what fundamentally changes who ends up on the world’s highest paid athlete lists.

Call to Action

The absence of women on the highest paid athletes list is not inevitable. It is fixable.

It changes when platforms prioritize women. When consumers support women’s sports intentionally. When brands invest with purpose.

Ardsley exists to move that change forward.

👉 Join us at www.ardsley.org to support women athletes, shop women led brands, attend women centered events, and help build an equitable future for women in sport.