The WTA isn't profitable either, but they've managed to get equal prize money at joint events by selling off a 20% stake and a "Secret Subsidy" from the Women's Tennis Association. The WNBA only costs the NBA something like $15 million a year. Which they're happy to pay for the "goodwill". Basically the same thing the Slams are doing in tennis. They make so much money, they can afford to "waste" several million on the WTA for the "goodwill". In the current political climate, it's a smart investment for them I think.
Pay gap between men's and women's tennis is widening, and the women's tour wants "the marketplace to step up"
www.telegraph.co.uk
Tennis has long trumpeted the fact that its biggest events pay equal prize money to male and female performers. Yet this impression of equality is being maintained only via a secret subsidy of almost £25 million from the Women’s Tennis Association.
The hidden investment is propping up female prize money at the four biggest combined events below the slams: namely Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid and Beijing. The Association of Tennis Professionals, which runs the men’s tour, makes no equivalent direct contribution towards event prize money.
The hidden subsidy is not the creation of WTA chief Steve Simon, but dates back well before his appointment in 2015. Each successive head of the WTA must have hoped that the societal march towards gender equality would eliminate the pay gap, by levelling up the market value of the women.
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In the event, the opposite has happened. The ATP has been able to grow revenues off the back of the golden generation of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Yet these combined events have not lifted the pay offer commensurately for the women. In a classic example of tennis’s dysfunctional governance, the ATP is setting the level for prize money at combined events, but the gap with the WTA is only growing larger.
This places the WTA in a potentially unsustainable position over the long term. The sums are most significant at the four Premier Mandatory tournaments. The owners of these events – who include Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison for Indian Wells, and super-agency IMG for Miami and Madrid – are paying only 38 per cent of prize money.
The WTA is stumping up the other 62 per cent, which comes to almost £4.4 million per tournament. Six other significant events – Doha, Dubai, Wuhan, Rome, Cincinnati and Toronto/Montreal – are also being subsidised in a similar way. Here is the background for a scathing editorial published last week by John Millman, formerly a member of the ATP Player Council, on the
news.com.au website.
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“Equal prize money between men and women in tennis can be put to bed,” wrote Millman. “It won’t be happening. Principles and tennis equality have been thrown out the window thanks to some poor decision-making by the WTA.”
Millman did not mention the hidden subsidy, but he did list the relative incomes of the tours from 2021, which found the ATP on £142 million and the WTA on £71 million.
For purposes of comparison, the ATP’s golfing cousin at the PGA generated £1.28 billion in revenues in 2021, but then it runs events itself, whereas the tennis model involves leasing franchises to third parties. The WTA’s ongoing commitment to equal prize money at the big events has placed a huge strain on its finances.
On signing a four-year, £64 million deal with new sponsor Hologic last year, it front-loaded its income, receiving £40 million at once to help with cash flow. It then sold off 20 per cent of its commercial operation to private equity firm CVC in March, in return for another £120 million of ready funds.
The subsidy was particularly useful for the recent Mutua Madrid Open, which
stood accused of discriminating against female players
on scheduling and other issues. The criticism would surely have grown far louder had it been generally known that the tournament was supplying less than £3 million of the £7 million prize money received by champion Aryna Sabalenka and her rivals.
Recent weeks have seen high-profile players like Jessica Pegula (centre) speak out on the prize money disparity CREDIT: Getty Images/Clive Brunskill
When tournaments are challenged on prize money differentials, they usually point to market forces. Recent figures suggest that combined events such as Madrid have been receiving almost 10 times as much from ATP Media as they do from the WTA’s equivalent TV deal with Perform.
The four grand slams are anomalies in genuinely paying out equal prize money, but it could be argued that they are so rich, they can afford to be governed by principle as opposed to strict commercial logic. The WTA’s commitment to equal prize money exists only at the largest tour events outside the slams.
Lower down the pyramid, the sums have long been known to be unequal. A study undertaken by the Financial Times last year determined that “the total prize money awarded on the men’s tour so far this year is 75 per cent higher than on the women’s, the widest the gap has been since 2001”.
The picture is further complicated by the ATP’s bonus pool and profit-sharing systems, which offer £16 million to the top 30 players among other benefits. There is no equivalent on the WTA Tour. Telegraph Sport asked the WTA for comment on these issues and received the following reply:
“The WTA has always and will continue to push towards the equality our athletes deserve and to ultimately achieve equal levels of compensation at all levels of our Tour. The Millman article and thoughts you raised about Madrid are both flawed and accurate at the same time.
“The issue of equal prize money is not about strategy as both Tours have similar strategies. It is about the realities associated with the value the marketplace pays for the rights of a women’s sport property vs. that of a male sports property. As pointed out by Mr Millman, there is a significant difference in the rights fees and sponsorship fees paid by the market for what is a similar set of rights.
“This is unfortunately true across all women’s sport properties and is the direct result in the differentiation in compensation levels we see. It is time for the marketplace to step up and support women’s sport properties at the levels they deserve. Events such as Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid and Beijing that pay equal prize money deserve the acknowledgment and appreciation for their commitment in this space.
“Despite the difference in distribution levels that are provided to these events by the ATP and WTA, each of these events have committed to making the incremental investment from those ticket and event- related sales to make sure that all athletes are compensated equally as deserved. They should be celebrated, and with Rome’s recent announcement that it will be paying equal prize money by 2025, progress, while never fast enough, is being made.”
