Znak
Hall of Fame
Copying and pasting from a fellow redditor (u/anchatol) who transcribed the podcast Pospisil was on. He was quite frank about pay, fed and genie. Thought it was quite interesting!
If you want to give it a listen, link is here: https://www.sportsnet.ca/650/sports...-pospisil-challenge-making-living-tennis-pro/
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Q: Do you ever feel like—did you break a mirror somewhere along the way where, you know what, just as you really started to find your stride and your momentum, and then you just had some of these little injury setbacks—Milos has kind of had some of the same things that he’s had to deal with—but we’re kind of hitting the golden age for Canadian tennis. Never mind the Nadals, and the Federers, and the Djokovics, and the Andy Murrays, but you guys are really all starting to find your stride, too.
Pospisil: Yeah, for sure, we have a lot of momentum right now. I think tennis in Canada is just kind of booming, you know, to the places that it’s never been.
Q: Why?
Pospisil: I guess various reasons. One I would say: Tennis Canada had hired a French tennis guru guy that was head of development in France, and he came to Canada and he started hiring good coaches, and he started kind of overlooking tennis in Canada, and then in turn, Milos [Raonic] and I kind of came up—Milos first, obviously—to the big leagues, let’s say, of tennis, and then Genie [Bouchard], and I guess it just kind of started a little bit of a momentum, a swing, and that was it, yeah. I guess good coaching, and on TV, other young kids are playing, and suddenly it changes the culture.
Q: It’s become a sport—with you, and Milos, and Shapo [Denis Shapovalov] now—it’s kind of a trendy thing to do. You’re only 28, but you battled so many injuries, and I think we watch tennis—here with the Canucks, oh, Brock Boeser, he takes a long time off, but he’d rather be training right now—so to our listeners, to the average fan, is the sport of tennis much more physical and demanding than we actually think?
Pospisil: I’ll put it this way, tennis is—of course it’s difficult, because tennis is all I know, so I don’t really have much to compare with other sports—but I will say that tennis has a lot of different variables. It’s one of those sports where you need to be physically strong, you know: strength, explosiveness, endurance. You don’t focus on one thing, it’s like you need everything. Plus the season is grueling; you’re playing from the first week of January until mid-November, and then you have two weeks off, and then you go through a rigorous training program. You’re just killing yourself all of December, so you really just have two weeks off, and it’s tough. And then with everything mentally—there’s so many variables in tennis, so it’s definitely a tough sport, and I think it’s one of those that can get overlooked in terms of how difficult it is to sustain. You’re always trying to find this balance between pushing the limits and not pushing too hard.
Q: Well, if you get a little calf strain, it hampers you. You can’t play through it like football players and hockey players who go, “I can play through this.” Or do you play through all those injuries?
Pospisil: Well, that’s the thing—it’s almost like, in a lot of ways, you have to really find that balance. Because unlike the other sports, if you get injured you just stop making money, you stop making a living. You’re not under any contract, so it’s really cutthroat. It’s like, okay, you have a great year, now you’re not signing any contracts—twelve months later what you just achieved is gone. So we have, I guess, no insurance, when you look at it that way, so you really have to be on top.
Q: You’re a results-driven business, unlike where—we were just talking a few minutes ago about hockey players, when you sign a contract, you have a guaranteed contract for guys who can get term, whereas with you, if you don’t show up, you don’t get paid. There is something to be said about that: if you win, you make a lot of money; if you don’t win, you don’t make a lot of money.
Pospisil: Yeah, exactly, that’s the thing—you really have to be, at all times, keeping up and putting full focus on moving along with the trends and trying to be on top of your game, because as soon as you slip 2%, 3%, young guys come up, and then you’re gone.
Q: At what point do you as a tennis player start seeing results financially? Because like you said, we know there’s the really rich—and we know that Djokovic makes his money, we know Nadal and Federer—but at what point does a player on the tour start making money compared to a guy who’s, you know, “Hey, look man, I still got to bank this money, my mom and dad have to help me,” or sponsors, or whatever. At what point do you start seeing that return?
Pospisil: Oh boy, I could talk hours about this. But there are different thresholds for sure, I think, in the sport, where—the sport of tennis has some governing issues for sure, and yeah, the top guys are making a lot of money, and the Grand Slams and these big events, they love to publicize that, they love to, kind of—
Q: The big cheque presentations!
Pospisil: Yeah, and it gives off this view to the general public, like, “Oh yeah, look at this, look at these tennis players, look at how much money they’re making.” But then, for example the Grand Slams, they’re only giving back 7% of revenue to the athletes.
Q: Total? For everybody?
Pospisil: For the men, for the ATP Tour—I’m speaking on behalf of the ATP—so it’s 14% for the athletes: 7% for the women, and then 7% for the men, total prize money. So that’s not a very fair business—
Q: Everybody’s trying to talk 50-50!
Pospisil: Exactly, and the issue is we have no—the players aren’t unified, we’re not united, so we have no leverage on any kind of business negotiations. So it’s just like they pay us what they want, they distribute the prize money however they want. Now going to answer the question: I think if you’re in the top hundred, and you’re playing the main draws of the Grand Slams, you’re able to sustain yourself and you’re making money. But then there’s the issue of your expenses; you have to take care of all your expenses. You have to buy your flights, you have to pay for your coach, your physio, and then at some point, you have to make decisions—well, do I want to have a fitness trainer travel with me and a physio travel with me, it’s X amount of dollars. So it’s not an ideal situation in terms of the difficulty—the amount of effort it requires throughout your whole career and your whole life to make it there, and then the reward isn’t what it should be when you look at actually how successful tennis is financially in these big events
Q: You’re part of the ATP Council, and I think that makes sense. Your individual contractors, where you’ve got the unions—and we see it in all the other sports—it gives them more power. Has it been talk that’s been around for decades, or is this something new where you’re going, “Hey, we now know how much money we’re making. We need to get a part of it because we’re the show.”
Pospisil: Yeah, it’s been a conversation that’s been going on for years, but it’s such a difficult thing to do because it’s a very international sport. It’s an individual sport, there are language barriers—there are so many hurdles to actually be able to do this. Even within our own governing body, even in the ATP, in the bylaws, it’s really not easy to do. They really have done a great job to, I guess, mislead the players over the years to kind of have the monopoly over the tour, over what they do. Lately, there’s definitely been a movement for sure, I think, but it always comes in spurts, because the other thing they do really well is to keep the players uneducated and uninformed on what’s happening. I got elected onto the council, so I’m one of the ten players who are representing all the players on the tour, so I’m really happy that I’m in that position, because I feel like the first step is educating all the players on what’s actually happening, because most don’t even realize it.
...
If you want to give it a listen, link is here: https://www.sportsnet.ca/650/sports...-pospisil-challenge-making-living-tennis-pro/
///
Q: Do you ever feel like—did you break a mirror somewhere along the way where, you know what, just as you really started to find your stride and your momentum, and then you just had some of these little injury setbacks—Milos has kind of had some of the same things that he’s had to deal with—but we’re kind of hitting the golden age for Canadian tennis. Never mind the Nadals, and the Federers, and the Djokovics, and the Andy Murrays, but you guys are really all starting to find your stride, too.
Pospisil: Yeah, for sure, we have a lot of momentum right now. I think tennis in Canada is just kind of booming, you know, to the places that it’s never been.
Q: Why?
Pospisil: I guess various reasons. One I would say: Tennis Canada had hired a French tennis guru guy that was head of development in France, and he came to Canada and he started hiring good coaches, and he started kind of overlooking tennis in Canada, and then in turn, Milos [Raonic] and I kind of came up—Milos first, obviously—to the big leagues, let’s say, of tennis, and then Genie [Bouchard], and I guess it just kind of started a little bit of a momentum, a swing, and that was it, yeah. I guess good coaching, and on TV, other young kids are playing, and suddenly it changes the culture.
Q: It’s become a sport—with you, and Milos, and Shapo [Denis Shapovalov] now—it’s kind of a trendy thing to do. You’re only 28, but you battled so many injuries, and I think we watch tennis—here with the Canucks, oh, Brock Boeser, he takes a long time off, but he’d rather be training right now—so to our listeners, to the average fan, is the sport of tennis much more physical and demanding than we actually think?
Pospisil: I’ll put it this way, tennis is—of course it’s difficult, because tennis is all I know, so I don’t really have much to compare with other sports—but I will say that tennis has a lot of different variables. It’s one of those sports where you need to be physically strong, you know: strength, explosiveness, endurance. You don’t focus on one thing, it’s like you need everything. Plus the season is grueling; you’re playing from the first week of January until mid-November, and then you have two weeks off, and then you go through a rigorous training program. You’re just killing yourself all of December, so you really just have two weeks off, and it’s tough. And then with everything mentally—there’s so many variables in tennis, so it’s definitely a tough sport, and I think it’s one of those that can get overlooked in terms of how difficult it is to sustain. You’re always trying to find this balance between pushing the limits and not pushing too hard.
Q: Well, if you get a little calf strain, it hampers you. You can’t play through it like football players and hockey players who go, “I can play through this.” Or do you play through all those injuries?
Pospisil: Well, that’s the thing—it’s almost like, in a lot of ways, you have to really find that balance. Because unlike the other sports, if you get injured you just stop making money, you stop making a living. You’re not under any contract, so it’s really cutthroat. It’s like, okay, you have a great year, now you’re not signing any contracts—twelve months later what you just achieved is gone. So we have, I guess, no insurance, when you look at it that way, so you really have to be on top.
Q: You’re a results-driven business, unlike where—we were just talking a few minutes ago about hockey players, when you sign a contract, you have a guaranteed contract for guys who can get term, whereas with you, if you don’t show up, you don’t get paid. There is something to be said about that: if you win, you make a lot of money; if you don’t win, you don’t make a lot of money.
Pospisil: Yeah, exactly, that’s the thing—you really have to be, at all times, keeping up and putting full focus on moving along with the trends and trying to be on top of your game, because as soon as you slip 2%, 3%, young guys come up, and then you’re gone.
Q: At what point do you as a tennis player start seeing results financially? Because like you said, we know there’s the really rich—and we know that Djokovic makes his money, we know Nadal and Federer—but at what point does a player on the tour start making money compared to a guy who’s, you know, “Hey, look man, I still got to bank this money, my mom and dad have to help me,” or sponsors, or whatever. At what point do you start seeing that return?
Pospisil: Oh boy, I could talk hours about this. But there are different thresholds for sure, I think, in the sport, where—the sport of tennis has some governing issues for sure, and yeah, the top guys are making a lot of money, and the Grand Slams and these big events, they love to publicize that, they love to, kind of—
Q: The big cheque presentations!
Pospisil: Yeah, and it gives off this view to the general public, like, “Oh yeah, look at this, look at these tennis players, look at how much money they’re making.” But then, for example the Grand Slams, they’re only giving back 7% of revenue to the athletes.
Q: Total? For everybody?
Pospisil: For the men, for the ATP Tour—I’m speaking on behalf of the ATP—so it’s 14% for the athletes: 7% for the women, and then 7% for the men, total prize money. So that’s not a very fair business—
Q: Everybody’s trying to talk 50-50!
Pospisil: Exactly, and the issue is we have no—the players aren’t unified, we’re not united, so we have no leverage on any kind of business negotiations. So it’s just like they pay us what they want, they distribute the prize money however they want. Now going to answer the question: I think if you’re in the top hundred, and you’re playing the main draws of the Grand Slams, you’re able to sustain yourself and you’re making money. But then there’s the issue of your expenses; you have to take care of all your expenses. You have to buy your flights, you have to pay for your coach, your physio, and then at some point, you have to make decisions—well, do I want to have a fitness trainer travel with me and a physio travel with me, it’s X amount of dollars. So it’s not an ideal situation in terms of the difficulty—the amount of effort it requires throughout your whole career and your whole life to make it there, and then the reward isn’t what it should be when you look at actually how successful tennis is financially in these big events
Q: You’re part of the ATP Council, and I think that makes sense. Your individual contractors, where you’ve got the unions—and we see it in all the other sports—it gives them more power. Has it been talk that’s been around for decades, or is this something new where you’re going, “Hey, we now know how much money we’re making. We need to get a part of it because we’re the show.”
Pospisil: Yeah, it’s been a conversation that’s been going on for years, but it’s such a difficult thing to do because it’s a very international sport. It’s an individual sport, there are language barriers—there are so many hurdles to actually be able to do this. Even within our own governing body, even in the ATP, in the bylaws, it’s really not easy to do. They really have done a great job to, I guess, mislead the players over the years to kind of have the monopoly over the tour, over what they do. Lately, there’s definitely been a movement for sure, I think, but it always comes in spurts, because the other thing they do really well is to keep the players uneducated and uninformed on what’s happening. I got elected onto the council, so I’m one of the ten players who are representing all the players on the tour, so I’m really happy that I’m in that position, because I feel like the first step is educating all the players on what’s actually happening, because most don’t even realize it.
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