Gaby Dabrowski is the sixth best doubles player in women’s professional tennis. She was the Australian and French Open mixed doubles champion and reached the women’s doubles final at Wimbledon in 2019. She has won 11 career WTA titles and represented Canada at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
But Dabrowski has no sponsorship deals other than the free equipment she receives from racquet maker Yonex. She said she couldn’t afford to hire a full-time coach, trainer or physical therapist. She buys her tennis clothes online from sustainable companies and thanks the Women’s Tennis Association for a mental wellness program that allows him to use tour-sponsored psychologists.
“Doubles specialists, even during normal times before the pandemic, earn about 10 percent of what singles players earn,” said Dabrowski, who relies on occasional training at home and at occasional tournaments. “Luckily, I’m quite thrifty. My father taught me to budget at a very young age and I don’t live an extravagant life.
Over his 11-year career, Dabrowski, 30, has earned nearly $3.5 million. At the recent Madrid tournament, which she won with partner Giuliana Olmos, Dabrowski won $198,133. The following week, she and Olmos reached the final of the Italian Open and won $33,815 each. But with the cost of travel, hotel, food, clothing and training, Dabrowski says she’s barely scraping by.
“The pandemic has made things a lot more difficult,” said Dabrowski, who sits on the WTA Players Council and was instrumental in the reallocation of prize money in which players at the top of the game receive a smaller share for winning a tournament, and players those who lose in the first round, those who struggle or try to break through, receive a higher percentage.
“If we’ve learned anything, it’s that we need to look out for these lower-ranked players so they never say they have to give up because they can’t make a living playing tennis,” Dabrowski said. “We have to protect and maintain the game for them.”
Tennis has always been the most lucrative professional women’s sport. In 1970, Gladys Heldman, the editor of World Tennis magazine, persuaded the Philip Morris brand, Virginia Slims, to contribute $7,500 to sponsor the first women’s professional tournament in Houston.
Heldman then persuaded Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals and seven other young women to sign $1 contracts to play professional tennis. The said Nine originals The players have not won as much collectively in their careers as Ashleigh Barty did for winning the singles title at the 2019 Shiseido WTA Finals in Shenzhen, China. The $4.42 million Barty won that day was more than double the $1,966,487 King earned during his 31-year career, which included 39 major championships in singles, doubles and mixed doubles.
That, of course, doesn’t compare to the $94,518,971 that Serena Williams, the sport’s top earner, has amassed. She more than doubled that figure in terms of support. Naomi Osaka, who has only competed in nine WTA tournaments in the past year, is in the lead The Forbes list of the highest-paid female athletes for 2022, generating some $58 million from more than 20 corporate sponsors. She ranks just behind LeBron James, Roger Federer and Tiger Woods, but ahead of Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Tom Brady. Every year since 1990, when Forbes began listing the highest-paid female athletes, the leader has been a tennis player.
“Tennis has always led the way because we are a global sport,” said King, who in 1971 became the first female athlete to win $100,000 in prize money. “In 1970, we literally had to kill ourselves to get awards and attention for women’s tennis,” King said. “Even now, we have to work to be No. 1. And to achieve that, we realize that we are artists and we are there for our audience.”
Over the past 52 years, the women’s tour has had nine major sponsors, including Colgate, Avon and Toyota. After 12 years without a major sponsor, the WTA recently partnered with Hologic, a women’s diagnostic and medical imaging company, which pledged millions of dollars in a multi-year deal.
Women’s tennis prize money reached a peak of $179 million in 2019, shortly before the tour was halted for four months due to the pandemic. The overall price tag for the WTA now stands at $157 million for 2022.
“The last two years have been very difficult for the WTA, our members and for many businesses around the world,” Steve Simon, the organization’s chief executive, wrote in an email. “We are proud of the fact that our tournaments and our players have done what was necessary to operate during this time.”
For Simon, one of the big challenges has been the loss of revenue in Southeast Asia. In 2019, the tour struck a $14 million deal with Japanese skincare company Shiseido to sponsor the WTA Finals in China. When Barty won the tournament, she took home the biggest prize ever won in the sport, for men or women.
A year later, as the pandemic raged in China, that agreement dissolved. Then, when Chinese player Peng Shuai suddenly disappeared from view after reporting she was sexually assaulted by a high-ranking member of the Chinese government, Simon announced he was canceling all WTA events in China for this year. Last season’s end-of-year finals were moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, but the money on offer was about a third of what it had been in Shenzhen.
Another issue facing tennis is the growing popularity of women’s team sports, particularly football and the Women’s National Basketball Association. About two weeks ago, the United States women’s national soccer team concluded a collective agreement with the United States Soccer Federation, in which men’s and women’s teams will receive equal pay for equal work.
“Equality in team sports is essential, especially in terms of equal pricing,” said Ilana Kloss, King’s business partner. “But women still have a long way to go. Forty percent of athletes are women and they receive only 4 percent of media coverage. Many of these major tennis tournaments are owned by conglomerates and investment groups. And these companies are now headed by women who realize that women’s sport is good for business. It’s not just an old boys’ club anymore. We learn that the tide now affects all boats.
In tennis, women still lag significantly behind men in terms of financial compensation in most tournaments, with the exception of majors. At Wimbledon and at the Australian, French and United States Opens, the prize pools have been equal since 2007. This year, at Roland Garros, the winner of the men’s singles and women’s singles will pocket 2.2 million euros, or nearly $2.4 million. Joint tours to Indian Wells, California and Miami also offer equal pricing. But this is not true everywhere.
On May 15, world number 1 Iga Swiatek won the Italian Open and took home €322,280. A few hours later, Novak Djokovic defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas for the men’s championship and won €836,355. Second-placed Tsitsipas earned more than €100,000 more than Swiatek.
“Does this seem fair?” request Pam Shriver, who won 79 women’s doubles titles with Martina Navratilova. Shriver suggested that the only way players would get equal pay in Italy would be if female entrepreneurs like King, Serena and Venus Williams, Navratilova and Chris Evert stepped in and bought the tournament.
“We learned that not all joint events are created equal,” Shriver said. “In some tournaments, it’s cultural not to pay women as much. But in tennis, the pie keeps getting bigger. All we have to do is take a stand and ensure equality.
And then there’s Tsitsipas, who earlier this spring addressed the subject by asking an old tennis question: Should women receive the same prize money as men when they play two out of three sets in tennis? major tournaments and the men play three sets out of three? five? The women argue it’s about entertainment and ticket sales, not just time on the field.
“I don’t want to be controversial or anything,” Tsitsipas said. “There is the subject of equal pay for women who play best-of-three. There are many scientists and statisticians. I was told that women have better endurance than men. Maybe they can play best of five.
