I suggested something? I asked a question. How is he getting it? If it's a fact then he has the data. Provide it.
I want to see the attendance figures for each match, how many men vs. women are featured matches, how many get the show courts during prime time. You know... an analyses, a complete breakdown. 25% is a very exact figure....
By querying it (his knowledge) you were in effect suggesting, absurdly that the person who owns the tournament doesn't have access to high level data.
HE OWNS THE TOURNAMENT ffs. How the heck could he
not have access to the best data on the ticket sales for his own tournament of any person on earth if he chose?
Tiriac was obviously speaking in ballpark terms, as would anyone almost anytime they cited such specific percentages. But Tiriac has one additional string in his bow - he has the TV deals for each, and the sponsorships for each so he would know, like all tournament owners, exactly where the money is coming from, where they're doing well, where and gap between commercial support for the men's and women's tournaments is and how it changes over time.
"Completely incorrect"? Ok. I'll wait for you to provide proof to your claim that "the tours" decided this years ago.
Yes. By virtue of the fact the majors and some other joint tournaments have prize money parity we know without any doubt that there were discussions and decisions made specifically to address any (then) current or future pay-gap arguments which, as shown elsewhere, could be the source of embarrassment or harm the tournaments commercially.
Or do you think they miraculously came up with the same prize money number without any proactive discussions on the matter? If not, what's your beef with the pretty obvious observation that the prize money parity came about through a deliberate effort by the parties to be ahead of, or at least avoid being the target of, pay-gap discussions across commercial and sporting world?
By the way, the men's tour made no concessions, the tournaments decide this.
Wrong. The tour would have had a lot to do with it. They would have encouraged joint tournaments to have deeper discussions about prize money equality and even pay equality through their administrative levels. Even had they been disinclined to go down that path the human rights legislation in various countries would have made not doing so a liability, if even in negative PR terms.[/QUOTE]
Failing in terms of making the tour popular? If you have some proof then I'd like to read it.
Um, the fact that men's tennis is still, by far, more popular than women's tennis shows that in key metrics (attendance and revenue) despite the efforts to even it up. WTA tournaments world over have much lower attendance when compared to comparable ATP events. If making
women's tennis as a sport more popular was a goal - which it was - then they haven't got there yet. And Tiriac's comments with regards to attendance/revenue will be shared, but rarely voiced publicly, the world over by tournament owners/directors. Even the Aussie Open has had nightmares trying to address the issue of poor attendance to women's matches. I have been going there for years off and on and every year, still, you can see the difference. They have even changed to some extend the scheduling of sessions so they're not obviously men's or women's sessions. When they used to do that the men's ones were sold out weeks ahead and the women's ones you could still get tickets for on the day. And that's not even considering that the men's session tickets were way more expensive too.
In short: Tiriac has said plenty of loathsome things over the years and obviously likes to voice unpopular opinions. It doesn't mean he's wrong about the attendance/revenue differences. He, out of anyone, would know the breakdown of his own tournament's workings.
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