Serena Williams, the 2016 Wimbledon women’s champion, has become a surprise casualty of the economic fallout from the Brexit vote.
The American tennis player racked up a straight-sets victory over Angelique Kerber in the final on Saturday, winning £2m ($2.63m) in prize money.
However, the sum would have been worth $2.97m on 23 June, the day of the EU referendum, the result of which sent the pound plunging on currency markets.
It means that Williams, 34, lost out on $340,000, along with about $33,000 that was knocked off her share of the prize money for winning the women’s doubles with her sister Venus.
The financial blow was partly cushioned by an inflation-busting 7% increase in Wimbledon singles prize money from £1.88m last year, when Serena also won the women’s title. However, the decline in the value of sterling means that she will take home less in dollars this year than in 2015.
The pound has fallen by about 10% since the day after the referendum as traders sell the currency on the expectation of an economic slowdown and interest rate cuts. On 24 June, sterling had its biggest fall in recent history, and it has since touched a series of 31-year lows against the dollar.
Williams is unlikely to lose too much sleep over the effect of sterling’s fall on her Wimbledon earnings. She is the highest-earning female tennis player, having won $81m in prize money, a figure that she has supplemented with endorsements and other earnings.
Her seventh Wimbledon singles victory made Williams the third-biggest prizewinner in tennis history, behind Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer.
