Aryna Sabalenka hits out at ‘unfair’ gender pay gap between ATP and WTA Tours
Aryna Sabalenka has hit out at the lack of equal pay between the ATP and WTA Tours, after the Belarusian earned less than half of her male counterpart for winning the Cincinnati Masters title earlier this week.
Sabalenka beat Jessica Pegula in the Cincinnati final on Monday to claim her first title since January at the WTA 1000 event, earning $523,485 for her efforts.
Cincinnati, I love you â¤ď¸ pic.twitter.com/j8em9eToiG
â Sabalenka Aryna (@SabalenkaA) August 20, 2024
However, men’s singles champion Jannik Sinner, who won the same event, earned a much larger $1,049,460 after beating Frances Tiafoe in the final.
Both men and women play best-of-three sets in tour-level matches, and Sabalenka has spoken out about this when speaking to The Guardian, “From the TV point of view, from the ticket selling, from every point of view, it’s unfair.
“Of course, guys are always going to be physically stronger than women but it doesnât mean weâre not working as hard as they do. Women deserve to be paid an equal amount of money that men do.â
This inequality is also reflected in the doubles prize money in Cincinnati, with men’s doubles champions Marcelo Arevalo and Mate Pavic earning $322,000, compared to women’s doubles champions Erin Routliffe and Asia Muhammad sharing $154,160.
The WTA Tour are currently working towards a goal of achieving equal prize money at 500/1000 level events by 2027, and all single week events by 2033.
And the Cincinnati Open has now released a statement explaining the current prize money situation, “Equal prize money is extremely important to us, and we are actively working toward achieving that goal.
“The economic reality is prize money levels are based upon the amount of broadcast, data, and sponsorship revenues that are received, with the market currently paying a much higher fee for the rights associated with men’s sports properties than that of women, thus the difference in prize money.”
It concluded, “As part of the 2024 Circuit Structure initiative, we have made the commitment, irrespective of the economic realities, to make the incremental investment required to achieve equal prize money by 2027.”
Inside the baseline…
There is always a lot of argument surrounding tennis and prize money, with some people often using the amount of sets played as a reason not to have equality. However, other than at the four Grand Slam tournaments, men and women both play best-of-three set tennis and therefore there is no excuse not to be working towards equal prize money. It is nice to hear Aryna Sabalenka speaking out about this, as the Belarusian came under some scrutiny earlier this year after revealing that she watches more men’s tennis than women’s.
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