Sports finance expert fires Grand Slam boycott warning to ATP and WTA stars
A sports finance expert believes top ATP and WTA stars need to be completely united over a possible Grand Slam boycott, else “cracks” will start to appear in their quest for more prize money.
The fund at this year’s French Open has increased by 9.5%, but players are not happy that they are allegedly getting less than 15% of the tournament’s revenue.
Women’s world No 1 Aryna Sabalenka has led calls to boycott majors, with the player-backed Project Red Eye demanding a higher percentage of revenue generated by the four majors and benefit contributions.
Coco Gauff said she could see herself boycotting a Grand Slam if “everyone were to move as one,” and Jannik Sinner said players are not being respected enough. Conversely, Iga Swiatek and Emma Raducanu distanced themselves from such action.
Now, sports finance expert, Professor Rob Wilson, has exclusively told Tennis365 what steps need to be taken to give the players more leverage.
Tennis News
Roger Federer’s late career regret after Rafael Nadal shift explained by former rival
The injury Carlos Alcaraz has is ‘generally not a major issue’ – leading expert
Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for tennis coverage you can trust.
Top players such as Sabalenka are hoping Grand Slams can bring their revenue share in line with the 22% the ATP and WTA Tours provide at their 1000 Masters events.
But the fact that Sinner is saying different things from the likes of Raducanu and Novak Djokovic, while Carlos Alcaraz has previously not been too fussed about this matter, suggests a lot of work needs to be done.
Professor Wilson said, “What we’ve seen in tennis is a growth in revenue as the game has become more successful. TV broadcasters have been more interested in paying for it and the kind of commercial and sponsorship valuations have gone up as well.
“But that has meant that the players have not been necessarily taking as much as they might feel they’re due or they’re owed. You typically get these standoffs when there’s been a surge in rights and lots of press on certain sponsors going into tours, so they’ll probably find a middle ground somewhere before a boycott would take place.
“The tour needs to stay fairly united, so as soon as you get one competition that offers more than another, that’s when the cracks start to appear, and the players quite likely drive a bus through those to try and get more of the revenue out for themselves.”
Much has been made of the fact that sports in the United States have revenue shares that are around the 50/50 mark.
Indeed, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has a 51% player revenue split, while Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Football League (NFL) are at 50% and 48.5% respectively.
However, Wilson believes such comparisons are unhelpful; partly because they have unions, different financial systems and more. As independent contractors, tennis doesn’t have that.
“I would say it’s significantly unhelpful. You are genuinely comparing apples with oranges. They are totally different products. They work in completely different ecosystems,” he said.
“The US has got a really, really mature commercial market with a local population that is almost on a cultural basis used to spending, which is why you get the structures that you get over in the States.
“Tennis is played globally. You’re operating across a variety of different ecosystems, a huge number of ecosystems with a vast array of different sponsors, and in each territory, the economics are going to be very different.
“They always provide narratives in support of or in contrast to, but looking at the US is a really bad yardstick for a sport as globalized as tennis.”
Former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan branded tennis stars calling for a Grand Slam boycott “imbeciles”, with the talkSPORT pundit stating that Wimbledon gives 90% of its profits to the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) each year.
Ergo, with the French Open generating around €400m (£348m) in revenue in 2025, and Wimbledon generating profits of £54m for the financial year to 2024, Grand Slams may not have much margin to massively increase prize money.
On that point, Wilson added, “Part of it will be budgeted, and part will be market expectation. So if a tournament like Wimbledon would reduce its prize fund, I think people would be looking at that quite keenly, even if it was done on a budgetary basis. So if they were losing a bit of money in one year or hadn’t made the sort of turnover they’ve got. But the point he’s making is really important.
“So all of these clubs have got to make some money. In the context of the English game, the LTA have got a responsibility to invest in participation and grassroots and grow the game and all of those structural requirements. So it’s not about how much some of these organizations generate.
“We would always say revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is king. So it’s how much cash is left over at the end of all of that stuff that enables the sport, in this case, tennis, to move forward with the right players.
“And it’s an argument we see in sport all the time, which is players wanting to earn the maximum they can possibly generate through their performance, which I think is fair. But they have to have an eye on where their sport is, where it’s come from, and where it needs to go.
“So if they take too much money out of the game now for, because they’ve got a shortish career, that will be money that can’t then be reinvested through the game and generate the next wave of Andy Murray’s and Emma Raducanu’s.”
In addition to more prize money, players wants a Grand Slam contribution to player welfare, including pensions, injury insurance, and maternity leave. The tour funds this but the slams do not.
Top stars say players lower down the rankings need greater prize money more than they do, with many outside the top 150 sometimes struggling to make ends meet.
Finally, they want to have a say in the schedule, which is one of the longest in all of sport at 11 months. Whether they get that remains to be seen.
READ MORE: Italian Open: Daniil Medvedev explains how he will ‘try to make Jannik Sinner lose’
