For millions of tennis fans used to watching a dazzlingly blonde Maria Sharapova see off her opponents on Centre Court, it must have been a shock to see the former tennis player, now naturally brunette, feature as part of Bloomberg’s Power Players Conference in New York last month.
In 2025, no athlete past or present relies on merely their winnings to keep them afloat. To succeed in the contemporary era is to have a raft of brand endorsements and additional financial strings to your bow designed to outlast a comparatively brief playing career.
But Sharapova – whose net worth was last estimated as being close to $220million by Forbes – arguably created the blueprint for diversified success and is one of the standard bearers for a particular type of lucrative sporting retirement.
Sharapova set the highest of bars during her career with respect to endorsements. Rated the richest active female tennis player for 11 consecutive years on the tour, the 38-year-old is believed to have raked in a staggering $300m from off-court earnings during that period alone.
Hugely marketable from her prodigal Wimbledon win at the tender age of 17, Sharapova inked deals with Nike – including a signature clothing line, Gatorade, Porsche, Tiffany & Co, Tag Heuer, Evian, Motorola, and Land Rover, among other blue chip brands.
Although her standing as a ‘face of’ was somewhat dented by her 2016 sanction for testing positive for banned substance meldonium, Sharapova continues to trade off her image, signing post-playing career endorsement deals with Stella Artois, Aman Hotels, Hastens, and Dubai-based online trading provider CFI.
Sharapova has also amassed a lucrative property portfolio which includes a $8.6m ranch in Summerland, California, an $11m Montecito mansion, and a $25m Manhattan Beach complex which recently sold for a record-setting price to LA Lakers star Luka Doncic.
But while many athletes would be happy to rest on their laurels and watch passive income flood their bursting bank accounts, Sharapova has enjoyed a more profitable second act.
Not for nothing did she study management and leadership at Harvard Business School during her enforced hiatus in 2016. Nowadays, Sharapova is almost more recognisable as an unusually savvy investor and entrepreneur, albeit one with a career Grand Slam.
Sharapova caught the investing bug against the backdrop of her playing career and started small – but mighty. First intrigued by the prospect of a sunscreen created after the founder had seen a close friend diagnosed with melanoma, the then-26-year-old bought in to Supergoop! as a co-owner.
‘I said, “here’s my money”,’ Sharapova told Brand Innovators in 2023. ‘”I want ownership in what you’re building. And I want to use my platform and brand to help you grow.”
‘I’m very selective in the rooms that I go into,’ Sharapova added.
She picked the right room. In 2021, Supergoop! was acquired by investment management behemoth Blackstone for a staggering $750m.
In 2025, her portfolio is diverse but personal. Tapped in 2017 by UBS Wealth Management to serve on an advisory board designed to boost female investing by 2021, Sharapova’s choices are usually women-centric or have an angle which lends itself to her on-court background.
Companies like Tonal, a home gym system, speak to one aspect of her philosophy, but female-founded egg-freezing start-up Cofertility goes one step further.
‘Women’s sport is having an incredible moment,’ Sharapova told Vogue upon announcing her investment last August. ‘The emphasis on the athletes and their achievements and how inspiring they are is incredible.
‘If they can prolong their career on their own terms by freezing their eggs at a younger age, they’ll perhaps have the time to compete at the highest level for longer, have the time to decide on their partner, and not rush into a relationship for whatever reason.’
That the WTA announced this year that they will make landmark financial support available to female players undergoing fertility treatments is another example of Sharapova’s prescient investing strategy.
Other investments made by Sharapova are more catholic, such as men’s shoe label Wolf & Shepherd, crypto-currency wallet MoonPay, and investing platform Public.
Sharapova even made the foray into television in 2020 with an appearance on Shark Tank, the US’ The Apprentice equivalent, and chose to back Bala, an exercise range of weighted wrist and ankle bracelets. Sharapova and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban invested $900,000 for 30 per cent of the business – Bala is now estimated to be worth $10m.
Frequently, the former world No 1 takes a more hands-on role. At Therabody, a wellness brand which launched with the transformational Theragun recovery tool beloved by committed amateurs and professional athletes, she is both an investor and an strategic advisor.
Sharapova has also burnished her boardroom credentials with a number of business advisory positions. Most prominently, Sharapova is an independent director at Moncler Group, which owns luxury outerwear brands Moncler and Stone Island.
But Sharapova’s Midas touch is not without its missteps and curiosities. Advisory roles at Naked Retail, a shop which aimed to bring direct-to-consumer brands to a brick-and-mortar location, and Bright, a live video platform connecting fans and creators flopped, with neither company maintaining a 2025 social media presence.
The biggest mystery of all is Sugarpova, the former player’s somewhat misguided candy line. Launched in 2012 in the thick of her playing career, the company’s launch – combined with Sharapova’s continuous avowals that she had a longtime love of sweets – was enough to give the layman pause.
Someone was buying it however, with Sharapova’s initial investment of $500,000 into the high-end sweet-treat market seeing blockbuster returns within four years. By 2016, the company were alleged to be selling five million bags of candies with names like ‘Flirty Strawberry Cream’ and ‘Sassy Sour Tart Cherry’, turning over an impressive $25m a year.
At this point, Sugarpova had distributors in over 30 countries, and two years later in 2018, the brand partnered with sbe hospitality to bringing the brand to its hotels around the world, further expanding its reach.
No one could accuse Sharapova of a lack of effort in her full-throated endorsement of her fledgling business. The player even suggested that she might temporarily change her name to Maria Sugarpova for the 2013 US Open, and was scarcely spotted without a bag of the gummy lips or tennis ball-shaped gumballs.
But as Sharapova’s career on court wound down, so too did the company. Sugarpova was able to weather the storm of her doping ban, but hardly thrived, and by 2021, Sugarpova had ceased operations. It was a silent disappearance rather than a change splashily announced, especially understated for a company believed to be worth $187m at its height.
Confusingly however, in Moncler’s 2024 report on the company’s corporate governance and ownership structure, a profile on Sharapova refers to her running of Sugarpova – and its ‘day-to-day decision-making and growth of the company from creative branding and packaging, to product R&D and retail expansion’ – in the present tense.
Whether Sugarpova is a dormant volcano or entirely extinct remains to be seen, but there is certainly no way of knowing: the company’s Instagram is still active but silent since 2021, there are no listed contact details for the brand, and its website produces only an error message when fired up. Most telling is the lapse of Sugarpova’s US trademarks in April 2024.
Sharapova’s attention is elsewhere, for now. But should she return to the brand, there’s little doubt that if anyone could resurrect it, it’s her.
