Most Popular Female Athletes on Twitter (X) Right Now

When Simone Biles pulled out of events at the Tokyo Olympics and explained why on social media, her engagement numbers spiked higher than almost anything else recorded by a female athlete on the platform that year. That single moment says more about how these followings actually get built than any list of raw follower counts can.

How Female Athletes Built Their Twitter Audiences

Three things happened around the same time: broadcast coverage of women’s sport expanded, the Olympics gave athletes more global exposure, and athletes stopped waiting on team PR departments to shape their image. Serena Williams and Biles both used Twitter to talk to fans directly, and sponsors noticed the engagement that followed.

The Most-Followed Female Athletes on Twitter/X

Follower counts shift constantly, more so since the platform’s rebrand to X. The names below have stayed near the top among women in sport based on publicly reported figures across 2022 and 2023.

Athlete	Sport	Country	Follower Range
Serena Williams	Tennis	USA	15M+
Maria Sharapova	Tennis	Russia	4M+
Alex Morgan	Soccer	USA	3M+
Simone Biles	Gymnastics	USA	3M+
Lindsey Vonn	Skiing	USA	2M+
Candace Parker	Basketball	USA	1M+
Megan Rapinoe	Soccer	USA	2M+

Figures represent approximate ranges rather than precise current totals, as follower counts change daily and vary by source.

Why Serena Williams Leads

Williams built a following that has little to do with tennis alone. She posts about fashion, motherhood, business, and racial equity in sport, and that range pulls in people who might never watch a match. The result is a fan base considerably larger than tennis by itself could ever produce.

Soccer and the USWNT Effect

The US Women’s National Team turned on-field wins into social growth about as well as any team has. The 2019 World Cup title generated record engagement for women’s football, and both Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe saw sharp follower jumps during and after the tournament. Athletic success paired with public advocacy kept them visible well outside the competitive calendar.

Gymnastics and the Olympic Platform

Biles is the clearest case of what an Olympic cycle can do for an athlete’s following. Rio in 2016 introduced her to a global audience. Tokyo in 2021, and her decision to speak openly about mental health after withdrawing from events, produced some of the biggest engagement numbers any female athlete has posted. The athletes who shape conversations beyond their sport tend to end up with the largest audiences, not just the best results.

What Makes a Female Athlete Account Compelling

A few patterns show up again and again among the top accounts:

• Authenticity: family moments, training struggles, and raw post-competition emotion outperform polished marketing content.
• Advocacy: athletes who take clear positions on social issues tend to keep the followers who share those values.
• Cross-sport appeal: the biggest accounts belong to people whose identity extends past a single sport.
• Consistency: posting through the off-season as well as competition keeps an audience engaged year-round.

The Narrowing Gap

In the early 2010s, the most-followed women in sport had a fraction of the following their male counterparts did in the same sport. By the early 2020s that gap had closed considerably in tennis, gymnastics, and football. Serena Williams’s numbers now sit in the same range as, or ahead of, many male Grand Slam champions.