Aryna Sabalenka extended her social media dominance by amassing 5 million Instagram followers after completing the Sunshine Double. Sabalenka is just the third WTA player in history to achieve this milestone, joining retired legends Serena Williams and Sania Mirza, who comfortably sit in the top two.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka passed another WTA legend, Maria Sharapova (4.7 million), on her march to the five million milestone. She is the most followed active female tennis player by some distance, and it has been that way for over a year. Rivals Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff each account for 2.3 million followers on the Meta platform.<\/p>\n
At the end of last season, Sabalenka had about 3.8 million followers, and in less than six months, she’s added over 1 million followers, which represents the highest follower growth of any WTA player in the current roster.<\/p>\n
Sabalenka’s popularity on social media is not by accident. She’s built a huge following on the back of her best tennis years, reaching eight Grand Slam finals and winning half of them. There is no brighter spotlight than being the No. 1 player and headlining as many finals of the biggest events, with her latest triumph in Miami putting the gloss on what has been a fine start to 2026. She is only the fifth woman in history to win Indian Wells and Miami in the same season.<\/p>\n
However, as ferocious and determined as she is on the court, Sabalenka extends that intensity off the court and amplifies moments that humanize the player she is, with reels of her dancing and goofing around the tour with fellow pros.<\/p>\n
Most of her cross-tour friendships go viral and debunk the myth that modern tennis players are isolated competitors. Beyond her fantastic results, this has massively helped to expand her audience. News of her engagement to Oakberry CEO Georgios Frangulis generated a wave of attention, with the post commanding an impressive 1.2 million likes on Instagram.<\/span><\/p>\n Sabalenka has a long way to go to catch up with two former World No. 1s. Indian tennis icon Sania Mirza has over 12 million followers on Instagram, while at the very top is 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, who boasts over 18 million followers.<\/p>\n Main Photo Credit: Mike Frey-Imagn Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aryna Sabalenka extended her social media dominance by amassing 5 million Instagram followers after completing the Sunshine Double. Sabalenka is just the third WTA player in history to achieve this milestone, joining retired legends Serena Williams and Sania Mirza, who comfortably sit in the top two. Sabalenka passed another WTA legend, Maria Sharapova (4.7 million), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":89565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2,9],"tags":[1766,894,9906,25],"class_list":["post-99573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wta","category-featured","category-news","tag-aryna-sabalenka","tag-maria-sharapova","tag-sania-mirza","tag-serena-williams"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99573"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100575,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99573\/revisions\/100575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}