
What is Billie Jean King’s Net Worth?
Billie Jean King is a retired American professional tennis player with a net worth of $20 million. She is considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, having won 39 Grand Slam titles, including 12 singles, 11 mixed doubles, and 16 women’s doubles.
King was a vocal advocate for gender equality and founded the Women’s Sports Foundation and the Women’s Tennis Association. She also won the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match against Bobby Riggs in 1973. King was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987 and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
In addition to her tennis career, King has written two books, “Pressure Is a Privilege: Lessons I’ve Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes” (2008) and “All In: An Autobiography” (2021), and executive produced the documentaries “The Battle of the Sexes” (2013) and “Althea” (2014). She has also appeared as herself on several TV shows and was portrayed by Emma Stone in the 2017 film “Battle of the Sexes.”
Billie Jean King’s Love for Baseball and the Dodgers
Billie Jean King and her wife, Ilana Kloss, became minority owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers in September 2018. King’s brother, Randy Moffitt, pitched for the San Francisco Giants for 12 seasons and wore the number 17 jersey, which King wears to honor him at Dodgers games today. Moffitt chose the number 17 because he was passed over by 17 teams during the MLB draft. King and Moffitt grew up as Dodgers fans in Long Beach, California, but King became a Giants fan when her brother played for the team. Today, she is a Dodger fan again and expresses her love for the team by proudly wearing their jersey.
In addition to being a minority owner of the Dodgers, King and Kloss also own a stake in the Los Angeles Sparks WNBA team.
Early Life and Tennis Career
Billie Jean King was born in Long Beach, California in 1943. She grew up playing basketball and softball, but started playing tennis at age 11 at the suggestion of her parents. She took free lessons on public courts and attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School before leaving college in 1964 to focus on her tennis career. At a young age, King told former Olympic champion Bob Richards that she would become the best tennis player in the world.
Billie Jean King’s Tennis Career and Legacy
Billie Jean King began her professional tennis career in 1959 while attending college. In 1961, she and Karen Hantze Susman became the youngest duo to win the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon. King won the singles competition at Wimbledon for the first time in 1966, and she won again in 1967 and 1968. She was ranked the world’s #1 female tennis player in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1971, 1972, and 1974, and won a total of 39 Grand Slam titles.
In 1972, King won Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, and the French Open, and defeated Bobby Riggs in the “Battle of the Sexes” in 1973. She also co-founded World TeamTennis (WTT) with her then-husband Larry that year, and the league’s team she played on, the Philadelphia Freedoms, inspired Elton John to write “Philadelphia Freedom.” After retiring from competitive tennis, King became the Commissioner of WTT in 1984, making her the first female commissioner in the history of sports. She also served as the captain of the U.S. Fed Cup team and coached its women’s Olympic tennis team.
In 2020, the Fed Cup was renamed the Billie Jean King Cup in her honor, making her the first female tennis player to have a major global team competition named after her.
Billie Jean King’s Life and Career
Billie Jean King married attorney Larry King in 1965, but later realized she was attracted to women and became involved with her secretary, Marilyn Barnett. The relationship became public in 1981 when Marilyn filed a palimony lawsuit against her, resulting in Billie Jean losing approximately $2 million in endorsements. The palimony suit was later thrown out. King also had an abortion in 1971 which was revealed by her then-husband in a 1972 “Ms.” magazine article.
King is known for advocating for equal prize money in men’s and women’s tennis games and became the first female athlete to win more than $100,000 in prize money. In 1973, she refused to take part in the U.S. Open unless the prize money was equal, and the tournament’s organizers complied with her wishes. King became president of the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973 and co-founded “womenSports” magazine in 1974. She has served on the Sports Museum of America’s Board of Honorary Trustees and the museum houses the Billie Jean King International Women’s Sports Center. In 2021, she became an advisor to Chicago’s First Women’s Bank.
Billie Jean King’s Career Achievements
Billie Jean King was named the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year in 1967 and was the first tennis player and female athlete to be named Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year in 1972. She was included in Life magazine’s 100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century list in 1990 and received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award in 1999. King was also inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in the same year.
In 2000, she was honored by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation for “furthering the visibility and inclusion of the community in her work.” King received the Philippe Chatrier Award from the International Tennis Federation in 2003 and was inducted into the California Hall of Fame in 2006.
King received the Sunday Times Sports Women of the Year Lifetime Achievement award in 2007 and was inducted into the Southern California Tennis Hall of Fame in 2011 and the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame in 2013. She received the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.
The USTA National Tennis Center in New York City’s Flushing Meadows–Corona Park was renamed the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in 2006, and the Billie Jean King Sports Complex is located at California State University, Los Angeles.
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