It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that when Anna Kournikova reached the Wimbledon semi-finals (as a 16-year-old back in 1997) she changed tennis forever.
Perhaps not in the way she had hoped or imagined, her lack of success on the court often ridiculed, but there was no disputing her place as the most marketable woman the game had ever seen. By the time she had retired at the ripe old age of 22 she left a changed game behind, both in terms of making the sport more lucrative for the players that remained and attracting a new (and sometimes unwanted) audience.
CNN have written a piece explaining how this ‘marketing monster’ came to be and it makes for pretty interesting reading. We’ll start from the top:
As any teenage boy who had a Kournikova poster tacked to their bedroom wall will tell you, the beautiful young woman transcended tennis.
“Construction workers were watching tennis, business people were watching tennis. It wasn’t just normal country club corporate clients that were watching tennis now,” says Ken Merritt, who also coached Kournikova at Bollettieri’s famous Florida Academy.
“Women’s tennis had a lot of TV deals after she was playing. There’s a lot of things Anna did for the sport that went well beyond the box scores of wins or losses.”
Of course all that attention came with a downside, perhaps most evident in how her game never reached the heights promised by her remarkable Wimbledon run in 1997:
If Kournikova was one of [PR and marketing consultant David] Skilling’s clients today, the marketing manager says he’d limit her media exposure, spend more time concentrating on her game, and tone down the sex symbol status.
“It turned into a marketing monster that ended up eating itself. It felt like it was too much too quick. And it just wasn’t sustainable,” adds Skilling.
“A professional athlete has such a short window where they need to be at the top of their game. So if you’ve got those distractions going on, it’s going to affect your game — it can’t not.”
It’s worth mentioning that Anna was the most Googled sportswomen in the world in 2002, which shows just how much of a household name she had become. So who has had the last laugh then, those who criticised her for never winning a single’s title or the lady herself?
Kournikova still had a career most players could only dream of, becoming a trailblazer for the next generation of Russian stars such as Maria Sharapova.
“In terms of sports marketability, there is a limit to how good people look,” explained Skilling.
“There had to be a certain level of skill, to warrant brands throwing that kind of money at her.”
And if you judge a person’s career solely on their earning potential, by that measurement Kournikova was “laughing all the way to the bank”…
“As much as she was laughed at, she was the one winning. She knew what she was doing,” he said.
With an estimated net worth of $50 million I’d say she is probably pretty happy with how things have panned out. You’ll also always be popular with most sports fans long after your retirement Anna, which isn’t something many athletes get to say.
[source:cnn]
[imagesource:instagram/britneyspears] When I first saw Britney Spears' latest Instagram...
[imagesource:rsaweb] Change a life. Connect a child. Did you know, that RSAWEB is on...
[imagesource:befunky] Fear can significantly influence women’s preference for immedia...
[imagesource:instagram/princeandprincessofwales] Cancer is increasingly happening in ad...
[imagesource:rawpixel] With statements like "South Africa is hanging on by a thread –...