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Elina Svitolina WTA Finals 2018
Tennis News, Tennis Tournaments, WTA Tennis Players

WTA Finals prize money drastically slashed by $9m


It has been announced that the prize money for the 2021 WTA Finals will be cut by more than half of 2019’s total

The total prize money for the 2021 Finals has been revealed to be $5 million. This reduction is over half of the 2019 prize pool which was $14 million, with the tournament suffering a total decrease of $9 million.

This drastic cut in prize money is said to be due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the location of the tournament with the 2021 Finals being held in Guadalajara, Mexico.

This comes after it was announced that the Paris Masters will increase their prize money total, almost doubling the initial prize pool, reaching pre-pandemic levels. This increase is a result of the unexpected rise in ticket sales at Paris-Bercy.

The season-concluding WTA Finals are a round robin tournament where the eight best performing female players of the season are divided into two groups and then compete against each other.

This year’s groups are named after ancient Mexican cities. The Chichen Itza group contains top seed Aryna Sabalenka, former French Open champion Iga Swiatek, Maria Sakkari, who is enjoying a career-best season, and Indian Wells champion Paula Badosa.

Whilst the Teotihuacán group consists of second seed and French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova, third seed and World number four Karolina Pliskova, two-time Grand Slam champion Garbine Muguruza and the in-form Anett Kontaveit, who won both the Kremlin Cup and the Transylvania Open in recent weeks to clinch the final qualifying position from Ons Jabeur who missed out through injury.

With the withdrawal of 2019 champion and World number one Ashleigh Barty, this means a continuation of the statistic that every WTA Finals tournament since 2015 has seen a different champion, with no repeat winner.

Additionally, for the first time ever all of the players at both the singles ATP Finals and the WTA Finals are solely European.


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Tim Farthing, Tennishead Editorial Director & Owner, has been a huge tennis fan his whole life. He's a tennis journalist and entrepreneur as well as playing tennis to a national standard. He also helps manage his local club and volunteers for his local tennis organisation. He's a specialist in content about the administration of professional tennis and tennis coaching for all levels.