Not long after Indian Wells—she was upset in the fourth round by Italian player Flavia Pennetta—Sharapova’s in Florida for the Miami Open, at a cocktail party sponsored by Volkswagen’s Porsche. The occasion is her second year as the company’s global brand ambassador, and she arrives in a black Panamera, a kind of sports sedan, driven by her agent, Max Eisenbud of IMG, who’s represented her since she was 12. Getting out, Sharapova towers over Eisenbud, a 41-year-old from New Jersey.
Sharapova touches the car affectionately for the photographers. She looks like a model at an auto show, but Viktoria Wohlrapp, a senior marketing manager for Porsche, says that’s not why they hired her. Porsche is the most profitable auto brand in the world, but 85 percent of its customers are men. The company has been plotting how to sell more cars to women for years, and management says it hopes that having a prominent female athlete associated with the brand might help correct the gender imbalance. So it signed Sharapova to a three- year deal.
In a floral dress and bright yellow high heels, Sharapova is starting to sweat. “Get her a tissue,” Eisenbud quietly instructs a PR person. Sharapova discreetly dabs her chin and cheeks. A few minutes later, her promotional duties finished, she says she was a Porsche fan long before the company hired her. “I love the feeling of being in a sports vehicle,” she says. “I know it’s quite rare for a woman, but it’s such a powerful feeling.” A week later, with some unexpected downtime—thanks to a second-round loss to Australian Daria Gavrilova—Sharapova tweets a photo from behind the wheel of a Porsche (#girlstrip, #horsepower) to her 1.58 million followers.
Can Sharapova actually sell cars? “That’s very hard to say,” Wohlrapp admits. “But for us, it’s an image thing. It was very important to find someone who matches the brand, and we feel like Maria and Porsche is a good thing.” Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse, who wrote a case study in 2010 about the building of Brand Sharapova, has found that a celebrity endorsement can boost a company’s bottom line by as much as 4 percent. With a brand like Nike, the Sharapova effect is relatively easy to measure: The company sells a line of Sharapova tennis apparel (designed by her), and the demand for those items is an indication of the value she creates. With watches and cars, it’s harder to gauge the impact. But Elberse says that luxury brands are deriving tangible benefits from sponsorship deals: “These companies wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t see some value.”
In 2012, Sharapova started Sugarpova, which makes candy gummy lips and tennis ball chewing gum, and has since branched out into clothing and fashion accessories. She spent $500,000 of her own money to fund the company, which sold 30,000 bags of candy online in its first six months. “I love [tennis], but I don’t see myself going into the commentary booth,” she says. “Except for when my boyfriend plays”— rising Bulgarian player Grigor Dimitrov, whom she’s been dating since 2013— “I don’t remember when I actually sat and watched a whole match on television.”
But Sharapova isn’t ready to give up on the game. She maintains an intense training schedule during the offseason and still manages to make it to the final rounds of most tournaments. Those endless losses to Williams might have destroyed the confidence of anyone else, but Sharapova continues to chase her better half. “I think Maria is playing well,” Williams said at a news conference on May 7, after the two reached the semifinals of the Madrid Open (neither made it to the final).
After every point, whether she’s won or lost, Sharapova does the same thing. She walks back behind the baseline, faces the stands, adjusts her strings, then flips around to the net like a soldier coming to attention. She makes a fist as a subtle grimace travels across her face. Then she tosses the ball to serve and starts all over again.