Billie Jean King on power, purpose and passing it on

Few are as big in the world of women’s sports as Billie Jean King. The legendary athlete and advocate used her athletic dominance to build a powerful platform for equality, one that she has continued to scale and break barriers in sports and society. Now six decades into her career, the 2025 Forbes The list of the most powerful women in sports isn’t done leaving their mark on the world.

billie Jean King recently returned to school to continue the college education she abandoned at the height of her tennis career, but on a recent fall morning, King is working in the role of teacher, not student.

“Money is the one thing that everyone understands,” she says, recounting a moment that would go down as one of the most defining in the history of women’s sports. “Personally, I’m bigger in relationships, but money talks.”

The year King is referring to is 1972, and she has just defeated Kerry Melville 6-3, 7-5 in the US Open final to win her third singles title in the tournament. “I’m at the US Open press conference, 72,” King says, narrating the scene. “I’m sitting there and I’m seething inside and I’m furious about this prize money, because I want it right for us.” Her salary? $10,000. Ilie Năstase, men’s singles champion? $25,000.

“During that media conference I said, ‘I don’t think we’ll come back next year unless we get the same amount of money.’ Then I think: oh, that was stupid. You haven’t talked to the other women yet and gotten permission,” she says with a laugh, adding that she “sometimes does things without getting permission.” Then she talked to the other players, and they were on board. “They said it was OK, and then I knew, I knew it would be huge.”

King was right, of course: the threat of a boycott was enough to bring about change. The following year, the US Open became the first major tennis tournament to offer equal prize money, with the men’s and women’s singles champions receiving $25,000 each. It was a moment that heralded a new era in women’s sport and would lay the foundation for future campaigns for equal pay. It was also the first of countless victories King would score for female athletes, a fight she is as committed to as ever, earning her a spot on the 2025 list. Forbes List of the most powerful women in sports.

King’s methods for creating change have served as a blueprint for other athletes (think of the collective effort of the current crop of WNBA stars), but her strength comes from more than just the example she set for others. The 81-year-old remains involved with her eponymous nonprofit, the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative and the Women’s Sports Foundation, both of which she founded. Through Billie Jean King Enterprises, King and her wife, Ilana Kloss, are active investors in the sports landscape, with small ownership stakes in the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Sparks and Angel City FC, while also supporting media and innovation efforts through Just Women’s Sports and Trailblazer Venture Studio. The couple, who King says has an “I dream it, Ilana builds it” dynamic, also helped finance and launch the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), which debuted last January.

On top of everything else, there is her renewed academic career. “I told Ilana and others, ‘You know what I like? I’d like to finish my degree, and I haven’t finished college yet, so I want to go back,'” King recalls. “So I’m back.”

Perhaps surprisingly for an icon who has made it into the history books himself, King is a history major. The last time she was in school, in the 1960s, it was one of the few majors available to female students. (“Do you know how many majors we had to choose from as women in the 1960s?” she jokes. “Oh my God, it was horrible.”) Six decades later, she proudly introduces herself as a history major at Cal State LA, one who hopes to graduate in May. According to King, today’s athletes could also benefit from a better understanding of the past.

“Everyone now thinks they’re the first,” King chuckles. “If you go back in history, we’re usually not the first. Caitlin Clark has been great. But you know what? In 1971, it was the Chris Everett moment. When Caitlin came along, I thought, Oh, this is like Chris Evert in 1971. You wouldn’t see it unless you know your history. I know the history – and I’ve lived it, too.”

King, who has accomplished many firsts herself – the first female athlete to earn more than $100,000 in prize money in a single season, the first woman to coach a professional mixed team, the first female commissioner in professional sports, to name a few – is quick to praise those she believes paved the way for her.

“I’ve met every champion from the 1920s to today,” King says proudly, like a collector of legends rather than trophies, eager to show off every champion. “They all gave me so much. Alice Marble (who won 18 Grand Slam titles and held the world No. 1 ranking in 1939) taught me for a month.” She continues, working her way through the decades: “Margaret duPont (who won 37 Grand Slam titles and held the world No. 1 ranking in the 1940s and early 1950s) taught me to put my racket in my left hand so that my right hand could rest for the next point. You don’t see that very often now. You see them shaking their racket in their right hand. I always say to people that they need to rest for that next point!”

The impulse to invest in the future is embedded in the way King has always moved through the world. It’s what compels her to give players tips from her spot on the sidelines and what originally gave her the courage to make her sport better for the women who would come after her.

“I knew I wouldn’t win as many titles if I did this job,” King recalls. “I was willing to give up titles. That was very easy for me. If you can change the sport, if you can make it better, not just for your own generation, but for future generations, then it’s worth it. Making things better, that’s all we were talking about at the time.”

It’s also what athletes in other sports are saying now. In 2019, hockey player Kendall Coyne Schofield approached King and Kloss with the idea of ​​starting a professional women’s hockey league. “Kendall Coyne came to us and said, ‘We need a real professional league for us, where we are treated right, and we have a future for us and future generations.’ She talked like she used to, just like us. We thought, okay, we understand what she’s talking about.

The couple helped Coyne Schofield and the future Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association set up a bank account and develop a business plan. From there, they set up meetings with investors, including Mark Walter, the CEO of Guggenheim Partners and co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers – now the sole owner of the PWHL.

“I now realize that with one random phone call to Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss, I accomplished more than I did in a lifetime of dreaming and working to build a sustainable professional women’s hockey league,” Coyne Schofield confirmed via email. Forbes. “It was this one phone call that led to a million phone calls, which ultimately set the PWHL in motion.”

Very few people can provide practical guidance on launching a sustainable competition, but King can – and did. Of course, it starts with a dream, but only lasts if it is built up as a business. “If an athlete comes to me and says, ‘What should I do?’ I say learn your craft,” King says in a practiced tone that reflects how many times she has received this advice.

The PWHL isn’t the only new women’s league to enter the sports ecosystem in recent months. Unparalleled, a 3-on-3 women’s basketball league, which first launched in January this year and a new Women’s Professional Baseball League will launch in 2026. As someone who has spent his life pushing for real progress, King is careful not to confuse popularity with power. But like many visionaries, she has always managed to see what doesn’t yet exist, and for now she likes to think that we are indeed at a tipping point, with change still afoot on the other side.

“That’s what I like to use [‘tipping point’]. I think we are one, but I’m not always sure,” she muses. “Does it just feel that way? Or is it real?”

Her life’s work is to ensure that momentum is real, and despite all she has accomplished – 39 Grand Slam victories, an unforgettable victory in the ‘Battle of the Sexes’, a successful fight for pay equality, the creation of the WTA, a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congressional Medal of Freedom – King still wonders if she can do more. She is known for having all the answers, but is also still looking for guidance.

“I hope I have a few more years here,” King says. “What do you think I should try to do?”

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