Emma Raducanu became the most wanted athlete in the world after she won the 2021 US Open, but her hopes of attracting new commercial partners may be over for now.
That’s the verdict of Dr. Rob Wilson, a professor of Applied Sport Finance at Sheffield Hallam University, who believes the British star’s best hope of continuing her lucrative sponsorship agreements is to extend deals with her current backers.
British Airways, Vodafone, Tiffany, Dior, Evian, Wilson, Nike and HSBC were among the stellar companies eager to recruit Raducanu as a brand ambassador after her history US Open win, but it is not known if she is still working with those brands.
There have been reports that some of those lucrative brand ambassador deals may have come to an end, with Raducanu admitting earlier this month that they may have been a distraction after her famous moment in New York.
The Brit has often been criticised for putting sponsorship commitments ahead of tennis and while that accusation was unfair for a player who has always been committed to tennis, Raducanu has admitted the demands of her backers may have distracted her from her ambitions as an athlete.
“I’m obviously very grateful and fortunate to have had certain experiences and opportunities but I wasn’t prepared for the other things that inevitably do take some energy out of you,” she said.
“Especially straight after I did really well, for the next few years it was very much like there was so much communication about things off the court.
“And I would always, always give my 100 per cent on the court. I was always working really hard, but I just think that I wasn’t prepared as well for the other things that inevitably do take some energy out of you.
“I think now I’m a lot more structured. I’ll be like: ‘OK, I have this time where one hour we will talk about business. And now I’m going to go train for the rest of the week’.
“Also I think I’ve learned how to say no a bit more. Initially, I felt really bad for letting people down. I’d always want to do extra for whatever partner or magazine or whatever I’m shooting for.”
Now a financial expert has suggested Raducanu is no longer an attractive option for new sponsors, who may shy away from hiring her due to her record with injuries and the long spells she has had away from the court.
“I think with my financial sustainability head on, Emma Raducanu would be better off going for the longer term deals that are through extensions to her existing partners that have been there through that kind of boom phase of her career,” Wilson told Cardplayer.
“I think she will find it difficult to find new partners that are prepared to pay big money even if she gets through to a final or wins one of the big competitions simply because history now tells us that she’s won one competition and then been fairly irrelevant subsequently.
“So from her perspective, I think continuation deals would be a more stable way of her moving forward.”
Wilson went on to compare the decline in Raduanu’s commercial value to that of soccer star David Beckham, who suffered a huge fall from grace after he was sent-off while playing for England in the 1998 World Cup finals.
“We’ve seen massive fall-offs in certain sports,” he added. “David Beckham is the one that stands out the most when he got sent off in the World Cup and he went through that year of really struggling publicly. Then of course then he came through the other side and was able to double and triple and quadruple down on that and became very wealthy as a result.
“I don’t think we’ve really seen an athlete be marketed in the way that Emma has been that has then subsequently fallen out of favor. Because what you tend to find in the female space is that the competitive balance is quite high.
“So you might have a female athlete that wins a tournament and then doesn’t win one again, but they won’t have received the marketing exposure that Emma did.
“I think that’s the unique thing about her is it was immediate because she became so highly marketable in that short space of time. I can’t think off the top of my head of an athlete that’s really suffered not just the sporting performance drop off, but a financial performance drop off as a result of that sporting performance.”
