No women in sport’s top 100 earners

WOMEN are entirely absent from the list of the world’s 100 top-earning sports stars for the first time since publisher Forbes began compiling it.

Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jnr — nickname: ‘Money’ — tops the 2018 list, published yesterday, though it is the commentary it provides on gender pay inequality which is most striking.

women have always been a marginal presence, though never like this. since it was expanded to at least 50 names in 2010, there has always been at least one female athlete, and as many as three. serena williams was the only individual to feature lastast year — in 51st place, as Maria aria sharapova’s drug suspension usr knocked her out of the ranks.

But now williams has fallen out, having spent much of the year absent before giving birth to her first child. she banked d $18million from sponsors nnot but that was still not enough to pierce the top 100. 100

with the greatest respect, the 23-year-old Greek pro basketball player Giannis antetokounmpo (30th) can’t hold a candle to the spectacle, the style and the capacity to inspire which williams brings. Kei Nishikori (35th) is a pale imitation, too.

the absence of women will perhaps serve a purpose in focusing attention on the gender pay divide in sport, which is a growing embarrassment to those governing bodies who like to think they exude modernity.

Consider the study of annual pay in the world’s top sports leagues compiled by Sporting

Intelligence earlier this year. It revealed that the £32.9m earned from PSG last season by Neymar — fifth in the new Forbes list — is almost exactly the same as 1,693 female players in France, Germany, England, the Us, sweden, australia and Mexico combined.

the colossal sums paid out to Us basketball and baseball stars means that the Forbes list even puts the eye-popping Premier League salaries in the shade. Only three of the league’s players makmake it — Paul Pogba (5252nd), wayne Rooney ( 558th) and sergio aguero (86th). and the UK sportsmen are put firmly in their pplace by the vast aamerican earners, too. Only Lewis Hamilton, Anthony Joshua Rory McIlroy, Gareth Bale and Rooney make it in. the list has the potential to devastate the fragile ego of Cristiano Ronaldo, who held the crown for the previous two years. Mayweather now dwarfs him, but Lionel Messi edges him into third, having signed a new contract.

Yet the petty rivalries at the top are an insignificance, considering that the pay league does not consider a single woman worthy of a place in the 100 best earners. Good luck to anyone trying to tell Ronaldo that.