When NBC launches its television coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia next month, Maria Sharapova will be on hand as a correspondent.
The Russian tennis star doesn’t play a winter sport. But there’s a reason the network wants her as a face reporting from the town she lived in as a young girl. Simply put, Sharapova has “it.” Talent, looks, endorsements and an entrepreneurial spirit. The 26-year-old reigns as the world’s highest paid female athlete, earning $29 million from mid-2012 to mid-2013. The bulk of that ($23 million) came off the court, thanks to a pack of endorsement deals with Nike, Porche, Samsung, Tiffany, Head, and others.
Though some cringe at athletes gaining attention for their looks, figuring it obscures the true appreciation their talents deserve, Sharapova has seems to have successfully navigated the sometimes tricky merger of athletic talent and sex appeal. With 29 singles titles since turning pro in as a teenager in 2004, including four Grand Slam events, few seem to begrudge her bikini photo shoot for Sports Illustrated.
Sharapova caught the entrepreneurial bug in 2013, launching a line of premium candy dubbed Sugarpova. Sales reportedly exceeded $6 million in the first year.
Add it all up, and Sharapova is a natural to lead this year’s Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list for the sports industry.
Our 30 people, chosen by a three-judge panel among many candidates, basically break down into two distinct groups: professional athletes who boast strong personal brands or carry major importance to their sports, and young executives or entrepreneurs making a mark in the industry.
This year’s judges were Joseph Bailey, a sports industry recruiter with RSR Partners and a former NFL executive, Peter Guber, co-owner of the Golden State Warriors, and Shawn McBride, a longtime sports business consultant with Ketchum Sports & Entertainment.
Some of the athletes on the list in addition to Sharapova include basketball star LeBron James, whose brand continues to sky following his second straight NBA title last spring, skier Lindsey Vonn, NBC’s top female face of the upcoming Sochi Olympics, and baseball star Mike Trout, whose outstanding first two MLB seasons made him the favorite of the game’s sabremetric advocates who believe Trout’s all-around game should have earned him American League Most Valuable Player in both 2012 and 2013 over the more one-dimensional Miguel Cabrera. The Trout phenomenon has largely changed the way the industry values players.
Off the field, honorees include Jon Amoona, a 29-year-old attorney with Winston & Strawn who has represented the both basketball and football players’ unions in high profile cases including the NBA lockout and the New Orleans Saints’ “bounty-gate’ scandal, Maish Simon, 27, the co-founder of Pogoseat, developer of an application that lets fans upgrade seats at sports arenas, and Shane Kupperman, the 28-year-old Director of Basketball Operations for the New Orleans Pelicans, the youngest person to hold that position in the NBA.
