“The Highest Paid Female Athlete On The Planet; Why Sharapova Is So Hot” blared an ABC News/ESPN Sports headline yesterday, adding: “Maria Sharapova Is One of the Best Tennis Players in the World, a Moneymaking Machine … and a Future Icon.”
Whew! That’s an awful lot of superlatives before a story has even begun — but ABC’s hyperbolic feature on the 19-year-old Russian tennis star who sets men’s eyes a-twittering across the globe was only getting started.
“She sells mobile phones, wristwatches, cameras, handbags and jewelry, automobiles, perfumes, tennis racquets, shoes, and clothing,” wrote ABC, before calling Sharapova a “marketing engine,” “player,” and “product.” “With Maria, we’re building a brand,” explained Max Eisenbud, the “sports marketing agent who has known his best-known client since she was 11 years old.”
With the exceptional adjectives taken care of for the time being, ABC delved into the “substance of Sharapova’s business plan,” which grew out of a conversation between Eisenbud and Max Steinberg, an agent for Tiger Woods. “We figured out how Tiger does it,” said Eisenbud, adding that Steinberg “gave me an idea of the platform we could use.”
So how does Tiger do it? ABC doesn’t really explain, but it includes a high “recognition factor” and many “relationships” with sponsors — and Sharapova’s got both. As Eisenbud puts it, “her relationships make sense”: “She uses the products. She doesn’t just scratch her head and say, ‘Wow, I’ll do this for the money.’ She’s building relationships.”
Huh? So Sharapova puts some effort into her sponsorship deals. Revolutionary. And for that, she hauls home a lot of money — more than $20 million last year, according to ABC. Apparently, she only works on marketing ten to twelve days per year, so ABC declares that “the world’s most highly paid female sports athlete makes a phenomenal $1,357,144 a day” — nearly equal to her tournament prize winnings so far in 2006.
“She’s very much a businesswoman,” says Debbie Sanford, a spokeswoman for Sharapova’s “chosen automobile company.” (ABC plays coy with the “luxury all-terrain vehicle” in question.) “She’s very iconic, very young and dynamic, and she’s very professional,” Sanford adds. (Impressive, as Sharapova was only a “Future Icon” at the start of the piece.)
ABC plays coy, too, with the matter of Sharapova’s tennis, though she plays in the semifinals of the U.S. Open today: “Well, let’s let that wait for another story.” It does reveal, however, that she will meet with marketing specialists from her nine sponsors in November, “looking for ways to extend their market share by maximizing her appeal.”
Wrapping up, ABC veers in another direction altogether, quoting a New Yorker cartoon in which one beautiful blonde murmurs to another, “You know, beauty is the [E-ZPass] of life.” (ABC then spends three sentences explaining what an E-ZPass is.)
“Sharapova seems to have found her E-ZPass formula: Work hard, play hard, keep focused,” ABC concludes. “If she does that, she’ll be ‘iconic’ for years to come.”
Or as long as she continues to wangle coverage like this.
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.