Despite having sport star partners, some wives and girlfriends of players (WAGs) have made quite a success for themselves. Read about them in our article.
Last Update17 Sep, 2025
Reading Time7 min
Share
As the old saying goes, behind every successful man there’s a great woman, which certainly rings true for a variety of professional sports players. Undoubtedly, the wives and girlfriends of soccer and basketball stars attract as much attention as the players they’re involved with.
From Victoria Beckham to Kendall Jenner, our data analysis team have crunched the numbers to reveal which WAGs are considered the most successful.
Taking a seed list of the top-ranking soccer and NBA basketball better halves, we’ve used a weighted ranking system to assign a score to each in the report, revealing the most successful WAG in the professional sports industry.
The media attention that soccer players and their partners receive is huge, with many of them living their day-to-day lives surrounded by paparazzi. The term ‘WAG’ was created by tabloids back in the early 2000s and the development of social media has caused our fascination with the lives of the most famous footballer partners to grow even further.
The WAG obsession first came into the spotlight when the significant others of top profile players such as David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Ashley Cole accompanied their husbands and boyfriends to the 2006 Fifa World Cup in Germany. Victoria Beckham, Coleen Rooney and Cheryl Tweedy – football’s original WAGs generated almost as much attention of the pitch as England’s performance throughout the competition.
The wives and girlfriends became an integral part of international soccer, with WAGs showing their support in the stands becoming as iconic as some of the most memorable footballing moments.
Shakira, who is married to Gerard Piqué, has beaten off competition from Victoria Beckham and Perrie Edwards to become the most successful soccer WAG in the world, scoring 99 out of 100. The 44-year-old is even more successful than her famous footballer husband with a predicted net worth of £253,842,750. In addition to the stars incredible bank balance, Shakira has captured the hearts of millions of people around the world, with a social media following of over 122 million, 2.7 million YouTube searchers and over 1.7 million monthly Google searches.
Fashion designer and singer-songwriter Victoria Beckham takes the second position, scoring 95 out of 100. Victoria rose to fame in the 1990s as a member of the girl group Spice Girls, in which she was nicknamed Posh Spice. She married David Beckham in 1999 and with an impressive career, she has made a fortune from her successful fashion company, music career, book deals and TV appearances, earning her over £326 million – topping the earnings of Shakira.
Despite her significant earnings, Victoria scored slightly less than Shakira due to her lower social media presence.
In third place is singer Perrie Edwards, scoring 76 out of 100. Perrie rose to fame back in 2011 with her appearance on the eighth series of The X Factor, where she became a member of the British girl group Little Mix. The partner to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and mother to newborn Axel has more than 12.8 million followers, 28 million monthly Spotify listeners, 14 thousand YouTube searchers and a whopping £5.9 million fortune.
From supporting their partners, both on and off the court, to creating business empires, being a wife and girlfriend to America’s elite NBA stars is a hard job
A basketballer’s love life is something that seems to fascinate many and those who become romantically linked with a player are often scrutinised. What most people don’t know is that some of the partners of the biggest NBA stars in the world have carried out impressive careers along with booming businesses and gaining hefty social media followings.
Being an NBA star has plenty of obvious perks; money, celebrity status and endorsements, the list goes on. Among the many well-known benefits of being a star basketball player is the opportunity to meet some of the most beautiful, talented and powerful women in the world.
The Kardashian-Jenner sisters, Khloe and Kendall went head to head to be crowned the most successful NBA WAG. Taking the top spot was model and partner to Phoenix Suns player Devin Brooker, with a score of 86 out of 100. Kendall became the recognisable celebrity she is today after appearing on the reality television show Keeping Up With the Kardashians, alongside billionaire sisters Kylie and Kim.
Jenner began modelling at the age of 14 and by 2018 became the highest-paid model in the world. With 217,600,000 followers and a net worth of $40 million, it comes as no surprise that the socialite and media personality ranked as the most successful.
Khloe Kardashian takes second place in our WAG success ranking, scoring 85 out of 100. The reality TV star is no stranger to the WAG status, after being linked to many famous basketball players over the years, including Lamar Odom, Rashad McCants, James Harden and most frequently Tristan Thompson.
In the third position is wife to Iman Shumpert, Teyana Taylor, with a score of 82. She has an army of fans across social media with over 14.5 million followers and 2.6 million monthly listeners on Spotify. With over 246 thousand Google searchers and 6 thousand searchers on YouTube, Teyana has made quite the impression on fans.
Former family friend to the Kardashian-Jenner clan, Jordyn Woods made a surprising appearance in the top ten, scoring 66 out of 100. The model, socialite has a huge social media presence with 12,636,900 followers and bringing in a staggering $62,123 per post on Instagram.
Taking a seed list of the top-ranking soccer and NBA basketball wives and girlfriends, the report uncovers which WAG is the most successful, by scoring each on the following 10 factors;
Net worth (Via Celebrity Net Worth & Wealthy Gorilla)
Number of published cookbooks (via Goodreads)
Social media influence (via Instagram, Twitter)
IMDB credits (IMDB)
Length of on-screen career (IMDB)
Wikipedia presence (Wikipedia)
YouTube search volume (AHREFS)
Google search volume (AHREFS)
Sponsored post earnings (Instagram, Inzpire.me)
Spotify Monthly Listeners (Spotify)
Using a weighted ranking system, the study assigned a score out of 100 to each person in the index, revealing the most successful soccer and basketball WAG. Each factor was scored from 1 to 10 – 10 being the highest.
Page Information
Topics
Share
