In 2021, at almost every level of the sport, men earned more than women
Nadal takes on Daniil Medvedev in the Australian Open men’s final on Sunday, he will be chasing history. Winning would give him his 21st grand-slam title and put him ahead of any other man to have played the game, including his great rivals Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic . But the record books will not be his only incentive.A daily newsletter with the best of our journalismThe prize for winning Sunday’s final is A$2.9m .
But there is still a gender pay-gap in the sport. In 2021, at almost every level, men earned more than women. One reason is that the women’s game is muchthan the men’s, so the most successful man pockets a larger share of the prizes; Mr Djokovic, the top-ranked male player last year, raked in $9.1m in tournament winnings with three grand slam victories. The top-ranked female player, Ashleigh Barty won only one grand slam.
The men’s and women’s games are also marked by sharp internal inequality. The International Tennis Federation , the sport’s governing body, estimates that there are 87m tennis players in just 41 countries. Breaking into the top 100 is a remarkable achievement but is hardly reflected in earnings. In 2021 Mr Djokovic’s prize money was 17 times greater than that of Jiri Vesely, the 100th-highest earner. In golf the same ratio was six to one.
For lower-ranked players of both genders, the skewed earnings make life tough. In 2013, the ITF estimated that less than 5% of all professionals broke even. Tournament organisers are trying to tackle this by distributing more money, more evenly. Prizes on the men’s tour increased by 66%, in real terms, between 2009 and 2019 . In this year’s Australian Open, first-round losers earned A$103,000, around 4% of what the eventual winner will get; in 2012, they got around 1% of the top prize.
Players are pushing for more change. They complain that soaring revenues from tennis—by some measures the fourth-most followed sport in the world—still only trickle down to them. By one estimate, just 18% of revenues from major tournaments is given as prize money, a lower share than in other sports. In 2019 Mr Djokovic co-founded the Professional Tennis Players Association to lobby on issues like this.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Emma Raducanu 'creeped out' by stalker visits🔴 Teenage tennis sensation Emma Raducanu says she has been left feeling unsafe in her own home after a stalker visited it three times, a court has heard
Read more »
Munich: The Edge of War is posh-washing for an elite that’s still in charge todayWith the country apoplectic at the entitled behaviour in Downing Street, does the world need the reputation of another Tory flop, Neville Chamberlain, redeemed? As Robert Harris’s historical thriller hits Netflix this week, Oliver Keens argues it’s the wrong film at the wrong time
Read more »
Rafael Nadal reveals he considered ‘saying goodbye’ to tennis last yearRafael Nadal has revealed that during his six-month injury layoff last year he had conversations about the possibility that he may have to ‘say goodbye’ to tennis
Read more »
Capturing “Inner Turmoil”: Alex Prager’s Startling New Portrait SeriesAs her new portrait series goes on show at London’s Lehmann Maupin gallery, American photographer Alex Prager talks about the collective emotional damage wrought by the pandemic and her screenwriting ambitions
Read more »