Billie Jean King is an American retired professional tennis player who is ranked number 1 in the world and has a net worth of $20 million. King, considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time, has won 39 Grand Slam titles: 12 in singles, 11 in mixed doubles and 16 in women’s doubles. She also won the singles title at the inaugural WTA Tour Championships.
During her career, Billie Jean represented the United States at several Federation Cups and the Wightman Cup, and was a member of the United States team when they won nine Wightman Cups and seven Federation Cups. A vocal advocate for gender equality, 29-year-old King won the 1973 Battle of the Sexes tennis match against 55-year-old Bobby Riggs. Billie Jean founded the Women’s Sports Foundation and the Women’s Tennis Association and captained the USA in the Federation Cup for three years.
King was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987 and received the Fed Cup Award of Excellence in 2010. In 2009, she was honored by President Barack Obama with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Billie Jean is the author of the books Pressure Is a Privilege: Lessons I’ve Learned from Life and the Battle of the Sexes (2008) and All In: An Autobiography (2021), and she was executive producer of the documentaries The Battle of the Sexes (2013) and Althea (2014). Billie Jean appeared as herself in the TV series “Arli$$” (1999), “Ugly Betty” (2009), “Fresh Off the Boat” (2016) and “The Bold Type” (2020) and became 2017 Portrayed by Emma Stone in the film Battle of the Sexes.
In September 2018, Billie Jean and her wife Ilana Kloss became minority owners of the Los Angeles Dodgers. King’s brother, Randy Moffitt, was a professional baseball player who pitched for the San Francisco Giants for 12 seasons. Today, when Billie Jean attends Dodgers games, she wears a Dodgers jersey number 17 in honor of her brother. That was the number he chose for his jersey when he was a player. He picked this number because he was passed over by 17 teams in the MLB draft.
Billie Jean and Randy grew up as Dodgers fans in Long Beach, California. For many years, King was angry with the Dodgers for passing out their brother in the draft. When he played for the Giants, she became a Giants fan. Today, of course, she’s a Dodgers fan again. King and Kloss are also minority owners of WNBA team Los Angeles Sparks.
Billie Jean King was born Billie Jean Moffitt on November 22, 1943 in Long Beach, California. She was raised in a conservative Methodist household with her mother, Betty (a homemaker), her father, Bill (a firefighter), and her younger brother, Randy. Billie Jean played basketball and softball growing up, and by age 10 she was playing shortstop on a team that won the Long Beach Softball Championship. She started playing tennis at age 11 after her parents suggested she play a more “ladylike” sport, and she bought her first tennis racquet with $8 that she had saved. King took free lessons from tennis pro Clyde Walker on the Long Beach public courts, and one of those courts was later renamed the Billie Jean Moffitt King Tennis Center. Billie Jean attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School and then enrolled at Los Angeles State College (now California State University, Los Angeles). She left college in 1964 to concentrate on her tennis career. Her family attended the Church of the Brethren, and when King was a teenager, the pastor, former Olympic gold medalist Bob Richards, asked her what she wanted to do with her life. Billie Jean replied, “Reverend, I’m going to be the best tennis player in the world.” to focus on her tennis career. Her family attended the Church of the Brethren, and when King was a teenager, the pastor, former Olympic gold medalist Bob Richards, asked her what she wanted to do with her life. Billie Jean replied, “Reverend, I’m going to be the best tennis player in the world.” to focus on her tennis career. Her family attended the Church of the Brethren, and when King was a teenager, the pastor, former Olympic gold medalist Bob Richards, asked her what she wanted to do with her life. Billie Jean replied, “Reverend, I’m going to be the best tennis player in the world.”
King turned pro.
King turned professional in 1959 and competed in tennis tournaments while attending college. In 1961, Billie Jean and Karen Hantze Susman became the youngest duo to win the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon. In 1966, King won the singles competition for the first time at Wimbledon, and she also won in 1967 and 1968. She also won the 1967 US Open and the 1968 Australian Open in singles. She was the world No. 1 tennis player in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1971, 1972 and 1974, and according to King’s website, from 1961 to 1979 she won “a record-breaking 20 Wimbledon titles, 13 US titles (including four in singles ), four French titles (one in singles) and two Australian titles (one in singles) for a total of 39 Grand Slam titles”
In 1972 she won Wimbledon, the US Open and the French Open, and the following year she defeated Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes, which was watched by 90 million people in more than 35 countries. That same year, Billie Jean’s then-husband Larry co-founded World TeamTennis (WTT), a mixed-gender tennis league, and King recruited the players for that league. Elton John wrote the song “Philadelphia Freedom” as the theme song for the WTT team that Billie Jean played on, the Philadelphia Freedoms.
In 1984, after retiring from tennis, King became the commissioner of the WTT, becoming the first female commissioner in the history of the sport, and she also became one of the league’s owners. She worked as a commissioner until 2001. In 1992, King co-founded the World TeamTennis Smash Hits with Elton John, an annual all-star benefit tennis match benefiting the Elton John AIDS Foundation. After retiring, Billie Jean King captained the US Fed Cup team and coached the women’s Olympic tennis team. In 2013, she was appointed to the Presidential Delegation to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, but had to decline due to her mother’s illness, who died on the day of the opening ceremonies. In 2020, the Fed Cup was renamed the Billie Jean King Cup,
Billie Jean married attorney Larry King on September 17, 1965. A few years later, King found that she was attracted to women and became involved with her secretary, Marilyn Barnett. Marilyn lived rent-free at the Kings’ Malibu home, and when they asked her to move out in 1979, she threatened to leak letters written to her by Billie Jean. When the attempt failed, Barnett sued the couple for half of their income and their Malibu home. King and Barnett’s relationship finally became public knowledge in 1981 when Marilyn filed a child support lawsuit against her, resulting in Billie Jean losing about $2 million in advertising revenue. The alimony suit was later dismissed. In an article in the magazine “Ms. ‘ in 1972, Larry revealed (unbeknownst to Billie Jean) that the tennis star had had an abortion the year before. In a 2018 interview with Makers, King spoke about her decision: “I had the abortion because I wasn’t feeling well. I was just figuring out my sexuality, I was trying to get my life together, I was trying to start the tour, I just didn’t want to have a baby.” Billie Jean and Larry divorced in 1987, after King fell in love with Ilana Kloss, her doubles partner. She married Kloss on October 18, 2018, the ceremony was performed by former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. In a 2018 interview with Makers, King spoke about her decision: “I had the abortion because I wasn’t feeling well. I was just figuring out my sexuality, I was trying to get my life together, I was trying to start the tour, I just didn’t want to have a baby.” Billie Jean and Larry divorced in 1987, after King fell in love with Ilana Kloss, her doubles partner. She married Kloss on October 18, 2018, the ceremony was performed by former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. In a 2018 interview with Makers, King spoke about her decision: “I had the abortion because I wasn’t feeling well. I was just figuring out my sexuality, I was trying to get my life together, I was trying to start the tour, I just didn’t want to have a baby.” Billie Jean and Larry divorced in 1987, after King fell in love with Ilana Kloss, her doubles partner. She married Kloss on October 18, 2018, the ceremony was performed by former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. Billie Jean and Larry divorced in 1987 after King fell in love with Ilana Kloss, her doubles partner. She married Kloss on October 18, 2018, the ceremony was performed by former New York City Mayor David Dinkins. Billie Jean and Larry divorced in 1987 after King fell in love with Ilana Kloss, her doubles partner. She married Kloss on October 18, 2018, the ceremony was performed by former New York City Mayor David Dinkins.
King is known for campaigning for equal prize money in men’s and women’s tennis, and after Larry came up with the idea of a nine-person women’s tennis group (dubbed the “Original 9”), Billie Jean became the first female athlete to win more than $100,000 in prize money . However, when she won the US Open in 1972, the male winner, Ilie Năstase, received $15,000 more than she did. Billie Jean refused to compete in the 1973 US Open unless the prize money was equal, and the tournament organizers complied with her wish. The Original 9 began in 1970 with the Virginia Slims Circuit, the first all-women professional tennis tour, and by the end of the year the Original 9 had grown to 40 members. In 1973 King became President of the Women’s Tennis Association, and in 1974 she co-founded the magazine “womenSports”. Billie Jean was a member of the Sports Museum of America’s Honorary Board of Trustees, and the museum is home to the Billie Jean King International Women’s Sports Center. In 2021, she became an advisor to First Women’s Bank in Chicago.
In 1967, King was named Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year, and in 1972 she became the first tennis player and first female athlete to be named Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated. In 1990, she was included in Life magazine’s list of “100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century.” In 1999 she received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award and was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. In 2000, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) honored Billie Jean with an award for “promoting visibility and community involvement in her work.”
In 2003 she received the International Tennis Federation’s Philippe Chatrier Award and in 2006 she was inducted into the California Hall of Fame. King received the Sunday Times Sports Women of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007, was inducted into the Southern California Tennis Hall of Fame in 2011, and the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame in 2013.
In 2018 she was awarded the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award. The USTA National Tennis Center at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in New York City was renamed the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in 2006 and the Billie Jean King Sports Complex is located at California State University, Los Angeles.
| Assets: | $20 million |
| Birth date: | Nov 22, 1943 (78 years old) |
| Gender: | Woman |
| Size: | 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m) |
| Profession: | Tennis player, film producer |
| Nationality: | United States of America |