Emma Raducanu revealed that her lucrative sponsors stuck by her while she was sidelined for eight months last year. The Brit ended her season in spring to have three surgeries and only made her comeback last week in Auckland. A brand ambassador for the likes of Dior and Porsche, Raducanu said she had even less free time than usual during her lay-off thanks to her sponsors, who she learned “so much” from.
Raducanu enjoyed a winning return to tennis last week, defeating Elena-Gabriela Ruse before going out to second seed Elina Svitolina in a close three-set match. The ASB Classic marked her first tournament since April after she decided to have operations on both of her wrists and one ankle.
The 21-year-old’s lengthy injury break had consequences – her ranking dropped outside of the world’s top 300 by the time she returned. And many wondered what would happen to her portfolio of partnerships, with some brands less forgiving when one of their players is forced to stop playing.
But Raducanu has confirmed that she was supported the entire time, with her sponsors keeping her busy throughout the rehab process. “Things never really slow down for me,” the 2021 US Open champion said. “I think people may have thought like, ‘Oh, injury, you might have so much time on your hands.’ And no, I actually had even less. It was all a good time.”
Click here to join our WhatsApp community to be the first to receive breaking and exclusive tennis news.
Raducanu counts Tiffany & Co., British Airways, HSBC and Evian among the list of brands she works with and is now hoping to “give back” after learning from them during her hiatus. She continued: “My partners have really backed me and supported me even in a year out.
“So anything that I can do to give back, give extra is really important to me. And also just being around them, you learn so much that I think you can apply to your own trade and your own industry. And just the quality control, almost perfectionism, the detail, the planning, everything.”
Explaining how she transferred the tactics into tennis, the Brit added: “It’s like, ‘Well, okay, people approach a project like this and how can I kind of take that mindset into tennis?’ Because I think a lot of the time on tour, it’s kind of ad hoc, you know, that’s the norm.
