Women’s tour only has itself to blame for tennis’ equal pay furore

Damning details show the women’s tennis tour needs to look itself in the mirror with the sport’s biggest gamble blowing up in its face.

Ash Barty announcing her retirement. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled.

COMMENT

Let’s be clear. Equal prizemoney between men and women in tennis can be put to bed. It won’t be happening. Principles and tennis equality have been thrown out the window thanks to some poor decision making by the WTA.

It’s a contentious issue, equal prizemoney. Tennis, by a country mile, is leading the way in what its female athletes get paid. In 2022, seven of the top ten highest paid females in both endorsements and prizemoney were tennis players. But should the sport just be satisfied comparing itself to other female athletes or should they be in the conversation with their male counterparts?

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The WTA’s last win happened back in 2007 when they secured equal pay at Grand Slams, however, they have been treading water ever since.

Unfortunately for the women, Grand Slams occupy only eight weeks of the tennis calendar each year. Outside of the Slams prizemoney in the men’s and women’s game is not equal and the pay gap is widening.

Ashleigh Barty was the last player to be crowned queen at the WTA Tour Finals in 2019 before the tournament was taken away from China. Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images.

How is this even possible? How can the tour outside of the slams carry on favouring the male players in what they earn? It’s a shocking look and that shouldn’t sit well with the consumer. That is until you dive a little deeper and start to understand how the business of professional tennis is run.

The professional tour operates with two separate corporations, WTA (Women’s Tennis Association) and ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals), looking after their players’ interests. Their models and strategies are independent of one another, and their revenue is quite different. The cries from leading female players like Iga Swiatek and Viktoria Azarenka are getting louder as they seek prizemoney equal to that of the men for the whole year.

In 2021, the ATP recorded a revenue of $USD 176.8 million for the year against the WTA’s $87.8 million. While the ATP were kicking goals, through sponsorships, licensing and their flagship World Tour Finals, the WTA have blundered with own goals.

Ash Barty was the No. 3 highest-earning female athlete in the world in 2019, according to Forbes. NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled.

With the lack of a long-term strategy and revenue stagnating, the WTA went looking for a quick fix by selling nearly a quarter of their tour’s schedule to China. Even in the best of times it is difficult to get people through the gates in China and it is a bad look playing to empty stadiums, but it was when Covid hit and the country closed its borders that we saw the consequences of being over leveraged in one place on a “global tour.”

The WTA’s lack of strategy once again came to the fore with their principled stand on the disappearance of Chinese player, Peng Shuai. Principles didn’t last very long and were soon cast aside as the WTA lifted their ban on the Chinese tournaments despite Shuai’s whereabouts still being unknown.

John Millman has spoken out against one of the sport’s biggest issues. Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images.

The ATP governing body continually outperforms its WTA counterpart. Where the ATP send their flagship season ending World Tour Finals to packed out stadiums in tennis loving cities like London and Milan, the WTA attempt to build their game to the empty stadiums of Shenzhen and Fort Worth.

The women have had equal pay in Grand Slam tennis for 25 years and it is time for them to receive equal pay right across the board. The WTA have had more than enough time to achieve that goal. Our female tennis players are some of the best athletes in the world and deserve to be paid equally but unfortunately, they are represented by an underperforming body.

Tennis can be the envy of all sports when it finally achieves true equality, but I feel for that to happen it needs to be under one umbrella and based on track record that is with the ATP. Until then equal pay is a pipe dream and won’t happen.

John Millman is an Aussie tennis veteran, with one ATP Tour title to his name and a victory over Roger Federer in the fourth round of the 2018 US Open.

You can follow him on Twitter here.