#16. Game, Set, Debt: The Dark Side in the Life of Pro Tennis Athletes

Tennis is one of the most popular sports in the world among both men & women.

It is 4^th most watched sport in the world after Football, Cricket & Hockey.

And with that basic statistic, we could fairly assume that there’s a significant amount of money to be made in the sport.

There are roughly ~2053 pro men athletes & ~1369 pro women athletes across the world that are ranked on the professional tennis tour as of the first week of February 2024.

In the 52 weeks of a year, there are over 780 tournaments that happen across the globe, & approximately $250 million in prize money is up for grabs.

Most onlookers in the world, like you & me, presumptively assume that all professional tennis players make a ton of money. Well, let me burst that bubble right away; they don’t! Only the top 100 ranked athletes in the world make any significant money; the rest of the athletes hardly make enough to make a living from the sport and actually struggle to make ends meet.

Perception vs Reality

There's a huge difference between perception and reality in this sport when it comes to $$$$ made by tennis players.

Tennis does look very glamorous & fabulous when you start hearing that some of the highest-paid athletes are tennis players. Hearing about these big purses; big prize money tournaments are common.

For the majority of professional tennis players, their primary income comes from the prize money that they earn by competing in tournaments. The higher you finish in a competition, the bigger the prize money you take home.

If you are one of the top players (ranked below 50) you get millions in prize money as well as sponsorship money.

But if you are a lower-ranked player, all you get are a few free racquets & clothes in return for a social media promotion.

It’s no doubt that people who are ranked above 250 struggle to make a living from prize money alone.

Here are some numbers on the average prize money in a year that tennis players make based on their ranking bracket.

Look at that & think again about the middle and bottom rungs of players who are trying to make a living out of the paltry amount of money they gain from prize money.

About 80% of the professionally ranked tennis players don’t earn enough from the sport to cover the expenses of playing at the top level. The lives of the bottom 50% of the pro tennis players are worse, they spend money to play the sport!

Here are numbers from 2021 that show the same thing. Novak Djokovic made about $9 million in prize money, while someone ranked #151 in the world made only $300,000.

Now you could argue that it’s still a decent amount of prize money, but what you don’t see are the expenses involved as a professional tennis player.

Most tennis players never make any profit because they are on the road 40 out of the 52 weeks in a year (which is a long time to be away from home) travelling & playing tournaments.

Now think about all the expenses that come with travelling every week that these athletes need to keep footing each week—hotels, food, flights, & other travel expenses.

These expenses are not just for themselves but they also have to cover the expenses of their coach, sometimes a hitting (training) partner, and a physiotherapist, along with their professional fees.

These expenses can add up very quickly. Almost anything that comes in as prize money is almost instantly wiped out the following week.

You could also argue and make the point that if these athletes just won a few more games & climbed up the ranking ladder, they’d be fine and be able to make enough money & sustain themselves.

Well logically, you are right. After all, the way tennis and a few other individual sports are structured, their pay is dependent on their performance.

In tennis, the amount of money a player makes in a year is completely dependent on the player’s results. If they don’t perform well, they are going to run a year in loss!

But then the amount of money these players make is still heaps less compared to other sports.

Let me explain:

Carlos Alcaraz made the most money on the men’s tour in 2022: He made about $10 million from prize money & finished the year as the #1 ranked player in the world.

Carlos is, by the way, a generational talent who won an incredible number of matches in 2022. And let’s asterisk that prize money because that's the total money without calculating the expenses.

He pays his own travel, his coaches, his physios, and all the expenses that tennis players bear alone, which no athlete in a team sport or other sport like F1, have to bear.

And if you look at the $10 million as big money, see how that translates into prize money in other sports, Carlos made roughly what the 150th highest paid player in the NBA makes!

Side Note: The pay scale for badminton is worse than that of tennis! The amount of money that the World No.1 in badminton makes is what the World No.10 in tennis makes.

In all these other global sports, if an athlete is in the top 200 or 300 in the world, they are making a good chunk of money each year, but that’s not the case in tennis.

If you are wondering why, this is because of a few reasons:

👥 Employee or Freelancer?: Unlike the NBA, Cricket, Formula 1, Baseball, and Hockey, where the players are in a contract with the team, which essentially means they are an employee of the team, whereas in an individual sport like tennis, the players are just freelancers or independent contractors, who don’t get the benefits of travel, accommodation, and a bunch of other perks that the athletes in a team sport get.

💵 No Base Salary: Other sports have a minimum salary, and a part of the problem with tennis is that the players, despite working 9 months a year, travel the globe, and yet, if they don’t win a few matches, they don’t make enough money.

🏗️ Structure of the Tennis Association: Unlike most other sports which have a central association that owns the growth of the games & the players, tennis is managed by 7 different organizations.
For example: Football is operated by FIFA, Cricket by the ICC, Basketball by the NBA / FIBA, and Tennis by 7 different stakeholders! ITF → ATP → WTA → 4 Grand Slams

• ITF (International Tennis Federation): The governing body that governs things like the Olympics and some of the more global aspects of the sport like the grassroots & youth tournaments.

• ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals): The Men’s Tour

• WTA (Women’s Tennis Association): The Women’s Tour

• The 4 Grand Slam events that are each owned & operated independently

  • Australian Open —Wimbledon — French Open — US Open.

While all these stakeholders work together in promoting & developing the sport around the world, yet each of them has their own agenda. Sometimes they are not able to see eye to eye on fundamental aspects like the prize money and so on.

Also, the revenue generated by these 7 organizations together is much lower than that of other sports.

In total, all 7 organization together make close to about $3 billion every year.

If you have followed my other blogs, you’d know that most of the money comes in to a sport from broadcasting & media rights. But for tennis, even though it is the 5th most watched sport in the world, it accounts for less than 2% of all the global sports media rights in the world.

Lastly, most sporting associations and organizations invest and share a significant amount of revenue with the players. For example: The governing bodies of Basketball, Hockey, American Football, Baseball etc., split more than 50% of their revenue with the players. Sadly, this is not the case with Tennis.

Tennis organizations only share about 18% of the revenue with the players.

The journey of a professional player, while seemingly glamorous, is also filled with big risks. Of course, there are big rewards, but only for the top few. With perhaps a few lessons from the other money-making sports, I hope things will take a turn for the better for the tennis players as well as the organizations that are involved in growing the sport, both in terms of monetary growth and the popularity of the sport!

I hope this was a fun read, as much as I enjoyed researching & putting this together. If you’d like to thank me, do consider sharing this with a friend of yours or on your social media accounts. Thanks!