Sharapova tops Russian celebrity ratings - Forbes

Source: ITAR-TASS

Tennis player Maria Sharapova has topped the Forbes list of 50 Most Famous Russians for the second time. According to the rating, the 27-year-old athlete outdid her competitors for earnings: Last year she made $24.4 million. However,Sharapova did not come first for mentions in the media (14,779 times) or number of web searches (513,492 times) using the Yandex search engine, which in Russia has more users than its famous global competitor Google.

Second place in terms of earnings went to hockey player Alexander Ovechkin, who had come fifth in the previous rating. The Washington Capitals forward's annual income was $16.6 million. His name was mentioned 23,750 times by the media last year and he was searched for 381,147 times on Yandex.

The top ten also included pop stars Grigory Leps, Philipp Kirkorov and Alla Pugacheva, as well as conductor Valery Gergiev, who was once again Russia's most well-off musician. Last year the maestro earned $18 million.

The top ten of the Forbes list featured a number of other athletes: hockey players Ilya Kovalchuk ($11 million, 6th place) and Evgeny Malkin ($9.3 million, 10th place), and figure skater Evgeni Plushenko ($2.8 million, 7th place).

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