When will the pay gap in tennis be bridged?

Fifty-one years after tennis great Billie Jean King pushed the US Open to level the 'paying' field and give women players the same pay as men, the New York City  tournament will again split the total purse (a sport of tennis record $75 million in 2024) evenly between women and men. 

If Coco Gauff repeats as champion, she will win $3.6 million (€3.2 million), the same as Carlos Alcarez if he defends his title. 

Even the 64 losers on each side of the US Open's first round of 128 players will earn $100,000 for their efforts. Women and men.

It's a far cry from when 1972 US Open champion Billie Jean King took home $10,000, while men's champion Ilie Nastase won $25,000.  

Equal pay at the US Open came into effect the next year, in 1973, after King threatened to skip the tournament if it did not fully bridge the pay gap. It was, in fact, the first event in professional sports to offer equal payouts for female and male athletes. 

It took 28 years for the Australian Open to follow the US Open's lead in 2001. Then, the French Open and Wimbledon evened the paying field in 2007, meaning all four major Grand Slam events offered pay equity.

But in 2024,  the gap is nowhere near being bridged at the in-between tennis tour stops like last week's Cincinnati Open, the last warmup event to the US Open. Italian Jannik Sinner won the men's title, and the $1,049,460 top prize, while Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka took home the women's title and $523,485. A lot of money, yes. But almost exactly half of the men's prize in the same tournament.

Sabalenka did not address the pay issue in Cincinnati, but last year's winner, Coco Gauff, did. 

"It needs to be improved," she said. "My matches were more crowded or the same as some of the top seeds on the men's side, so I don't think it's an attraction issue." 

When it comes to pay equity in tennis, "the days of the ‘blazeratti' are over," sports economist Simon Chadwick told DW, referring to blazer-wearing oldsters who may feel entitled to their high positions, and the accompanying perks in their selected sports. Regarding the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for the men, and the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), Chadwick added: "The bureaucratic nature of tennis' governing bodies are simply not an excuse for letting the prevailing situation continue. Now is the time for root-and-branch reform of the economic injustices that female tennis players face."

The laggards

Beyond the slow-moving Cincinnati Open, the Italian Open has never closed its pay gap (€699,690 to the women's winner in 2024, €963,225 to the men's winner), nor the Canadian Open ($523,485 for the women's winner, $1,049,460 for the men's winner).

Last year, organizers of the Italian Open promised to achieve pay parity by 2025.  Star women's player Ons Jabeur asked why it should take two years. 

"It's time for change," Jabeur said. "It's time for the tournament to do better."

Both men and women competitors in Rome play best-of-three set matches, and the draw for each side features 128 players.

What's required, said Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economy at the SKEMA Business School in Paris, is a "fundamental transformation of the sport and significant cultural changes to how it is governed and commercialized... there's no running away from the moral and socio-cultural realities that women's tennis now faces."

Change is certain - in nine years

After years of complaints from players, lengthy negotiations with tournament organizers, and deferrals aplenty from tournament officials, the WTA last year put forth a timetable and a "pathway to equal prize money" with the ATP at all top-level WTA 1000 and WTA 500 events  by 2027. Less prominent WTA 1000 and 500 events will offer the same prize money as their corresponding ATP events by 2033.

Arguably, women's tennis is already miles ahead of most other women's sports on pay, if not pay equity.

Forbes 2023 list of highest paid women athletes included eight tennis players in the top 10.

Credit to Billie Jean King, who founded the WTA and pushed hard for equality and better pay through the 1960s, 70s, 80s and beyond. 

One beneficiary of King's efforts is Coco Gauff. As she was about to receive last year's US Open championship trophy from King, Gauff looked at her 2023 winner's check of $3,000,000 and blurted out, "Thank you Billie for fighting for this."

The fight is not over.

Edited by: Chuck Penfold