The world’s highest-paid celebrities earned a combined $6.1 billion before taxes and fees, a $200 million drop from 2019, after the global pandemic shuttered stadiums and silenced performances around the world.
The top-earning celebrities were Kylie Jenner and Kanye West , who brought in $590 million and $170 million, respectively. West collected most of his earnings from his Yeezy sneakers deal with Adidas, while Jenner’s payday came from selling a 51% stake in her cosmetics firm to Coty in January. While she had exaggerated over the years about the size of her business, the money she pulled in from the deal was real–enough to rank as one of the biggest celebrity cash outs of all time. In sports, Roger Federer (No. 3, $106.3 million) is the first tennis player to earn the top spot among athletes on the list, while soccer’s Cristiano Ronaldo (No. 4, $105 million) became the first team player to earn $1 billion during his career. Naomi Osaka set her own record at No. 90, bringing in $37 million income, the most money any female athlete has ever made in a single year.
The list ranks “front of the camera” stars around the globe using pretax earnings from June 2019 through May 2020 before deducting fees for managers, lawyers and agents. Figures are based on information from Nielsen Music/MRC Data, Pollstar, IMDB, NPD BookScan and ComScore as well as interviews with industry experts and many of the stars themselves.
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