Dominic Thiem may not care, but most tennis professionals lose money playing the game
By Cody Atkinson
Posted 10h ago, updated 5h ago
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to have a global impact, a battle is taking place inside one of the world's major sports.
On one side of the net stands the current men's world number one tennis player and ATP Player Council president Novak Djokovic, who is lobbying for a proposed fighting fund to help the lower-ranked professionals on tour keep their heads above water.
"The majority of the players who are ranked between 200, 250 in the world and the 700th or 1,000th [ranked player] do not have (national) federation support, do not have sponsors," Djokovic said.
"They are completely independent and left alone."
Djokovic and other top players, such as Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, theorise that without an active lower level the elite base of men's tennis will suffer over time.
Opposed to Djokovic and his illustrious colleagues is men's world number three and rugged individualist, Dominic Thiem,
who believes that any player struggling to make a living only has themselves to blame.
"There are many, many players who don't put the sport above everything else and don't live in a professional manner," Thiem told Austrian newspaper Krone.
Unlike many professional sports, tennis players essentially operate as independent contractors. There is no bargained minimum wage and no one to pick up the critical expenses required for day-to-day survival.
Time off the court is money out of their pockets. Injured tennis players often try to rush back from their ailments quickly to make sure they keep the cash coming.
With the sporting world largely in lockdown because of coronavirus, no elite players are hitting the court right now. Within the lower ranks, players are dipping below the breadline.
In 2014, the International Tennis Federation commissioned a study that suggested the average player cost for a tennis professional ranked between 101 and 250 in the world (without support staff and taxes) for a single season was $71,371.
About 95 per cent of all professional tennis players surveyed at this time said their prize money did not cover their costs.
A more inclusive look suggested about $250,000 is required to sustain an average-level player and support staff on tour for a year.
This means around the top 200 players on the ATP and WTA Tours do enough to support themselves adequately each year, and another 100 or so can scrape by through taking shortcuts and living cheaply.
Considering there are approximately 3,500 professional players on both the male and female sides, it means most players lose money while playing tennis.
Aussie O'Connell grinding out a living
A perfect case study is Australian journeyman Chris O'Connell.
During his tennis career, O'Connell has scrapped to keep his dream alive — selling clothes, washing boats and dodging border controls. It finally paid off last year.
No player contested or won more professional matches than O'Connell did in 2019, racking up 82 victories across the world.
According to O'Connell, he spent $90,000 on tour travelling as cheaply as he could. The 82 wins across the year blasted him up the rankings to number 114 in the world, earning him about $106,027 in prizemoney.
That gave O'Connell a profit of about $16,000.
O'Connell was able to win about as much prize money as the 227th-highest earning golfer on the US PGA Tour, a figure around the same amount of money that the 670th highest-paid AFL player takes home.
Djokovic and Thiem both earned in excess of 100 times what O'Connell was able to grind out.
Chris O'Connell has lived a journeyman's existence on the ATP Tour.(AAP: Dan Himbrechts)
O'Connell's success on the smaller stage in 2019, however, has meant that he has been able to earn more money on tour already this year than last, despite not having won an ATP Tour match this season.
This is largely due to his lucrative first-round loss at the Australian Open.
Grand Slam tournament appearances are the financial lifeline of all tennis players, where they earn the big bucks. Last year, Australian Priscilla Hon won around $485,000 playing singles on the WTA Tour, contesting tournaments in locations such as 's-Hertogenbosch and Hiroshima.
Of that $485,000, about $350,000 came from the Grand Slam tournaments, where she only won a single main-draw match.
Hon earned more from losing in the second round of qualifying at Wimbledon last year than she did at any non-Grand Slam event.
For players stuck on the fringes of qualifying for Grand Slam tournaments (with a ranking around 220 in the world), they are forced to travel to far-flung places where they likely lose money and potentially earn precious ranking points to get to the big stage.
Ultimately, both Djokovic and Thiem have valid points to some degree.
For Djokovic, ensuring the growth of the game is for the greater good, as is minimising the real financial hurt some of his colleagues are feeling right now.
For Thiem, the prospect of taking away money he rightfully won might be painful and strikes at the heart of natural justice.
The Austrian, however, must recognise that less successful players are not necessarily unprofessional, rather they are perhaps less talented to begin with, or at least not as talented right now.
Maybe the best answer is that the system has been broken for a long time and the extended shutdown of almost all global sport (
Belarussian football excluded) could be an ideal opportunity to fix broken and outdated financial models across all sports.
