Jessica Pegula is worth five times as much as Sir David Beckham and King Charles III combined, despite having never won a Grand Slam to date. Manchester United and England football legend Beckham received a knighthood for his contributions to the sport and services to charity after being named in the King’s Birthday Honours list last month, and the 50-year-old has a substantial fortune thanks to his endeavours both on and off the pitch.
Alongside his wife, Victoria Beckham, the former midfielder has racked up a net worth of around £500million, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. While a significant portion of Beckham’s earnings came from his days as a professional footballer, he has also boosted his finances significantly with post-playing endeavours such as his DRJB Holdings company. Meanwhile, Victoria made a name for herself with the Spice Girls, who remain the best-selling female group of all time, before moving into the world of fashion.
They sit just £140m shy of King Charles III’s reported £640m private net worth at present. When combined, Beckham and his wife, as well as England’s monarch, have a total net worth of just over £1billion, but this sum is dwarfed by the fortune Pegula is the heiress to – five times smaller, in fact.
That’s because the WTA world No. 3 is the daughter of Terry and Kim Pegula, who own the Buffalo Bills in the NFL, the Buffalo Sabres of the NHL and the Buffalo Bandits of the NLL.
While Jessica has earned a reported £13m in career prize winnings through her own endeavours on the courts, it’s a drop in the ocean compared to the £5.1bn she’s set to inherit from her parents.
After working for Getty Oil and the Felmont Oil Co, Terry founded East Resources, which specialises in natural gas drilling – a company he later sold the assets from the Pennsylvania, New York and Rocky Mountain areas to Royal Dutch Shell for a staggering £3.4bn. The 74-year-old later sold the Ohio and West Virginia assets of the company to American Energy Partners for £1.2bn.
Pegula will have had high hopes of clinching her first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon this summer, but fate had other plans. The 31-year-old failed to make it past the first round of SW19 in the singles game, suffering a 6-2, 6-3 loss to Elisabetta Cocciaretto on Tuesday.
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As she did not enter in the doubles or mixed doubles disciplines, her tournament has now come to a close. The New York-born star has come agonisingly close to tasting major glory, however, in the past.
Pegula has made the quarter finals of the Australian Open three times in the singles game, while also making it to the same stage once at the French Open and Wimbledon a piece in 2022 and 2023 respectively.
Her best Grand Slam run, however, came in the form of last year’s US Open, where Pegula made it all the way to the final of the event.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t her day to shine. In that match, Pegula was denied her maiden major title by WTA No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in a 7-5, 7-5 loss. Her focus will turn to the US Open next month.