Starting my career, the only goal I heard talking about was to reach top 50 WTA. Even now, I don’t hear anyone appreciating a professional player, if he, or she, is ranked outside top 100.
But how many of the fans who ignore us, those who are not in the top 100, are among the first five hundred in the world at their job?
And despite not being there, they make a living from their work.

In tennis it’s not like that and that’s the reason why this is one of the hardest professional sports from a financial point of view.
And that’s because not even the last ranked players in the top 100 cannot fully support themselves from their incomes.

But only very few are talking about the changes that can be made in tennis.

Let’s have another example: if you are ranked among the top 500 professional soccer players in the world, could you live a more than decent life? Definitely, yes.
The average salary in the Premier League is £3.9 million a year. With 20 teams in this league and a minimum of 20 players per team, we reach a minimum of 400 professional players in the English Premier league alone. With football being the most popular sport in the world, that league has for sure a special media exposure, which is why the TV rights were sold for £6.5 billion.

But tennis is the fourth most popular sport in the world, with 1.5 billion fans. Even so, the budget for all circuits – ATP, WTA, ITF plus the Grand Slam tournaments – is less than 2.5 billion dollars. And players receive only 17.5% of all earnings in this industry and a very large part of this money goes to the top 100 of the ATP and WTA rankings.
You will say that this is only normal, that they deserve the money, not us. But a sport in which those who are coming from behind rely only on the financial support of the Federations or, if those are poor, on that of their families, loses many values ​​and the general level decreases over time, something that can be seen nowadays.

Perhaps a slightly larger part of the total amount of financial contributions awarded in the three circuits should go to the players ranked outside the top 100, because the others benefit anyway from technical and other sponsorships. I emphasized “slightly larger” to make it clear that I am advocating only for the reduction of this huge difference.

In 2020, the pandemic had a very big impact on us. We couldn’t travel anymore, so we had no way to support ourselves from tournaments, because as ITF players we didn’t have a special clause for extreme conditions and we still don’t. Since then, however, more attention has been paid to players in this area of ​​the ATP and WTA rankings.
Thanks to Novak Djokovic and the PTPA, who supported the equality in treatment between all players and their rights ever since, a grant was given to everyone who was no longer able to play tournaments.

During US Open 2020, Nole embodied a new players association called PTPA (The Professional Tennis Players Association) which fights to unite and mobilize players, in order to create equality and transparency in professional tennis.
Their main goal is to give all players a voice in tennis.

Meanwhile, ITF is also trying to reduce this big difference and bring improvements to the circuit. They formed a committee of players through which they can keep in touch with the management committee more easily. The organisation increased the number of tournaments with higher prizes. It began offering hospitality – lodging and meals provided by the tournament organizer – to players on the main draw at the W80 and W100 tournaments (prizes of $80,000 and $100,000, respectively).

However, the huge difference I was talking about above persists, being accentuated depending on gender, because the financial prizes are smaller in the women circuits.

This difference is also caused by the organizational differences between the male and female circuits.
The ATP Challenger tournaments start from those where 50 points are awarded to the champion (for men, the ITF organizes only M15 and M25 tournaments).

For women, the Challenger tournaments are only the WTA 125 (total financial contribution of USD 125,000), and the ITF tournaments are between W15 and W100. As hospitality is granted at all Challenger tournaments, it can easily be seen that men benefits are starting with smaller tournaments, so they have support being lower ranked than women.
I recently played an ITF W60 tournament in Prague where, at the same time, an ATP Challenger tournament was held. Apart from the fact that the players benefited from hospitality – for the reasons I explained above – they were accommodated free of charge at the official hotel, I noticed other differences: better courts, line referees and more ball kids than at our matches.

Another issue – tangential to the one we are talking about today and to which I will return – would be a new standardization / alignment of the categories in the ITF and the Challenger circuits for both, men and women.

Returning to the financial issue, I am thinking of an alternative in which those who are playing on the ITF circuit have hospitality provided at all tournaments.

Also, from a certain level upwards – determined by points, converted into financial prizes – they should be able to pay from their income their transportation on the tour.

And at an even higher level, they should be able to afford a coach with them on the tour. Thus, those ranked between 200 and 500 would be able to support themselves and the resources of the national federations could be directed to the juniors.

Let it be clear: I don’t preach for an egalitarianism, not based on merit, but, at the risk of repeating myself, on reducing the differences.

Thus, a player ranked between the 300th and 500th places could consider himself truly professional and would focus only on preparation, on the quality of his game and not so much on the sources of income.

Because this infernal rhythm, with a lot of presences in the team championship, at UTR events – an unofficial circuit – which provides us with funds for the ITF tournaments, exposes us more often to injuries. This is my case now and I will come back to it in detail about what it means to be injured for an ITF player.

(Good news came from the organizers of Roland Garros who announced that they have increased the financial prizes in the qualifiers and the first round by 16% compared to 2022, but to reach the top 220 road paved with ups and downs.)

In conclusion, it will be some time before professional players will be given the rights and equality of treatment they deserve and will be able to support themselves from the sport and travel with a coach by their side, even if they are ranked outside the top 100.

But in order to achieve that goal, every player should use his voice to make a difference, however small, in this direction.

I also addressed many of these issues in the platform on the basis of which, in 2020, I ran for the ITF Players’ Council.