Billie Jean King On Power, Purpose And Passing It On

Few stand as tall in the world of women’s sports as Billie Jean King. The legendary athlete and advocate leveraged her athletic dominance to build a powerful platform for equality, one that she has continued to scale, shattering barriers in sport and society. Now six decades into her career, the 2025 Forbes Most Powerful Women In Sports listee isn’t done leaving her mark on the world just yet.

Billie Jean King recently went back to school to pursue the college degree she abandoned at the height of her tennis career, but on a recent fall morning, King is working in the mode of teacher, not student.

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

The year King is referencing is 1972, and she has just defeated Kerry Melville 6–3, 7–5 in the US Open final to walk away with her third singles title in the tournament. “I’m in the press conference at the US Open, 72,” says King, narrating the scene. “I’m sitting there and I’m just seething inside and furious with this prize money because I want equal for us.” Her paycheck? $10,000. Ilie Năstase, the men’s singles champ? $25,000.

“In that media conference, I said, ‘I don’t think we’re coming back next year unless we get equal money.’ Then I’m thinking, Oh, that was stupid. You haven’t talked to the other women and gotten the okay” she says with a laugh, adding that she “sometimes does things without getting the okay.” Afterward, she did talk to the other players, and they were on board. “They said it was okay, and then I knew, I knew it would be huge.”

King was, of course, right—the threat of a boycott was enough to create change. The following year, the US Open became the first major tennis tournament to offer equal prize money, with men’s and women’s singles champions receiving $25,000 each. It was a moment that launched women’s sports into a new era and would lay the groundwork for future equal pay campaigns. It was also the first of countless victories King would secure for female athletes, a fight she is as engaged in as ever, earning her a spot on the 2025 Forbes Most Powerful Women In Sports list.

King’s methods for creating change have served as a blueprint for other athletes (the collective effort by the current crop of WNBA stars comes to mind), but her power stems from more than just the example she’s set for others. The 81-year-old remains involved in her namesake 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 across the sports landscape, with small ownership stakes in the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Los Angeles Sparks and Angel City FC, while also backing media and innovation efforts through Just Women’s Sports and Trailblazer Venture Studio. The couple, which King says has an “I dream it, Ilana builds it” dynamic, also helped to fund and launch the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL), which played its first game in January of last year.

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

Perhaps surprisingly for an icon who herself has made it into history books, King is studying history. The last time she was in school, in the 1960s, it was one of few majors available to female students. (“Do you know how many majors we had to choose from as a woman in the 60s?” she quips. “Oh my god, it was terrible.”) Six decades later, she’s proud to introduce herself as a Cal State LA history major, one who’s hoping to graduate next May. As King sees it, today’s athletes could also benefit from having a firmer grasp of the past.

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

King, who herself accomplished many firsts—the first female athlete to earn over $100,000 in prize money in a single season, the first woman to coach a professional co-ed team, the first woman commissioner in professional sports, to name a few—is quick to credit those who she believes paved the way for her.

“I’ve met every champion from the 1920s up until now,” says King proudly, like a collector of legends instead of trophies, eager to show off each one. “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 to rest my right hand for the next point. You don’t see that very often now. You see them shaking their racket in their right hand. I’m always telling people to rest for that next point!”

The impulse to invest in the future is embedded in how King has always moved through the world. It’s what compels her to offer pointers to players from her spot on the sidelines and also 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 work,” recalls King. “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, it’s worth it. Making things better, that’s all we talked about back then.”

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 saying, ‘We need a proper pro league for us, where we are treated well, and we have a future for us and future generations.’ She was talking like the old days, like us. We thought, okay, we get 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 organized meetings with investors, including Mark Walter, the chief executive of Guggenheim Partners and a fellow owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers—now the sole owner of the PWHL.

“I now realize that I accomplished more in one random phone call to Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss than I had in my lifetime of dreaming and working to establish a sustainable pro league for women’s hockey,” Coyne Schofield confirmed over email to Forbes. “It was this one phone call leading to a million phone calls, which ultimately put the PWHL in motion.”

Very few people can offer real-world guidance on launching a sustainable league, but King can—and did. It, of course, starts with a dream, but only lasts if it’s built like a business. “If an athlete comes up to me and says, ‘What should I do?’ I say, learn the business you’re in,” King says, with a practiced tone that hints at just how many times she’s given this advice.

The PWHL isn’t the only new women’s league to enter the sports ecosystem in recent months. Unrivaled, a 3-on-3 women’s basketball league, tipped off for the first time in January of this year and a new Women’s Professional Baseball League is scheduled to launch in 2026. As someone who’s spent a lifetime pushing for real progress, King is careful not to conflate 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 we are indeed at a tipping point, with change still to come on the other side.

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

Her life’s work has been about making sure that the momentum is real, and for all she’s achieved—39 Grand Slam victories, an unforgettable “Battle of the Sexes” win, a successful stand for pay equity, the establishment of the WTA, a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congressional Medal of Freedom—King still wonders whether there’s more she can be doing. Known for having all the answers, she still finds herself searching for guidance, too.

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

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