Action Replay – Net income
In the August 2024 Action Replay we wrote about the struggles of players in the lower reaches of professional tennis.
But it’s not just those below the top echelons who need support. The Professional Tennis Players Association (www.ptpaplayers.com) aims to ‘Provide protection and support for players and advocate for their best interests’. It focuses on the top 250 singles players and the top 100 doubles players (men and women in both cases), but claims to service players of all rankings, and aims to extend this to cover junior and retired players too. Mind you, it is probably lower-ranked players who would be most in need of the association’s support.
Among other things, PTPA offers free legal aid to players involved in anti-doping and anti-corruption cases, provides medical opinions and recommendations, offers resources to support players’ mental health and (most importantly, no doubt) enables players to receive discounts at Hilton hotels.
Recently, the PTPA began legal action against the sport’s various governing bodies (BBC Sport, 18 March). There are allegedly too many tournaments, which many players are effectively forced to enter. Moreover, players do not receive a large enough percentage of the revenue generated by the top tournaments. According to the PTPA Executive Director, ‘players are trapped in an unfair system that exploits their talent, suppresses their earnings, and jeopardises their health and safety.’
The top twenty men’s and women’s players recently asked for more prize money in the four biggest tournaments, the Grand Slams. Losing in the first round at Wimbledon earns a player £60,000, but many lower-ranked players still struggle to get by. In the year to July 2023, the All England Club (which runs Wimbledon) had an operating profit of just under £54m, but ninety percent of that was paid to the governing body, the Lawn Tennis Association. Zheng Qinwen, the world number eight, said ‘increased prize money would be particularly welcomed by lower-ranked players, who can struggle to make ends meet at other times of the year.’
PTPA is rather different from most trade unions, and many professional sports have unions for players; for instance, the International Federation of Professional Footballers (FIFPRO) consists of sixty-six national players’ associations. All of which shows that even those better off than most people still need to have their interests protected against the powers-that-be of one kind and another.
PB