Unpacking the WTA's desire for equal prize money, and a possible deal with Saudi Arabia

If they (the House of Saud, the royal family of Saudi Arabia) could help getting us to equal prize money, even though there are negatives, I think there’s a lot of positives that can come out of it as well. Hopefully something good comes out of it the right way. Jessica Pegula, WTA No. 4 and a member of the tour’s Player Council, speaking to reporters at Wimbledon about the WTA’s pursuit of a partnership with Saudi Arabia—a nation widely scorned for its abysmal human rights records and efforts at “sportswashing.”

Note the emphasis Pegula put on the effort to secure equal prize money over other potential outcomes. It appears that the pay parity issue has become the hill that the WTA is willing to die on. Equal pay is a worthy goal, but pursuing it has turned into something of a crusade, leading the WTA to depart sharply from the way it has always done business—and into controversial partnerships.

Put more simply, is there no limit to what the WTA can or should do in order to achieve equal pay?

Let’s start with an important caveat. The four Grand Slam events and select top-tier tournaments already dole out the same prize money for men and women. The disparity in question exists because the WTA has never been able to generate the volume of revenue that has left the ATP men earning more at the bulk of day-to-day events. And there are a lot more of those small, single-gender events on both tours.

A significant increase in the highly popular combined (ATP and WTA) events might be a remedy—the Miami and Indian Wells 1000 events offer equal prize money—but there are formidable legal obstacles to that. As for a merger of the tours, the ATP has always been adamantly opposed for fear of having to subsidize the WTA.

“A merger is only going to happen if the merger creates something better for both parties,” Paul Oyer, an economist at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, told me in a telephone interview. “In the corporate world mergers like this can work because they make prices better for both parties. But these organizations aren’t corporations.”

But the fervor for equal prize money has led the WTA to seek out other entities to subsidize the tour. It is leaving no stone unturned in its search, which has led the outfit to depart from the familiar script for generating adequate revenue mainly through tournament revenues, sponsorships and media rights. This spring, the WTA sold a 20 percent stake in the company to European private equity titan CVC, which is funneling $150 million into the WTA—a good portion of which will go into boosting prize money equality, in addition to more aggressive marketing and media captures.

“There are different things to try to raise the visibility of the women’s game so that you end up with the same revenue and therefore prize money [as the ATP],” Oyer said. “Another way is to bring in people who just want to support the cause of the game, and especially to support women.”

In that quest, the WTA is dealing with some unusual suspects, including China and the House of Saud. In 2014, the WTA launched an Asian swing heavy on Chinese tournaments. The disappearance of WTA player Peng Shuai in the fall of 2021, shortly after she posted on social media that she had been sexually assaulted by a high-ranking official of the Chinese Communist Party, changed all that. WTA CEO Simon announced an official boycott that would not be lifted until there was a transparent investigation into the incident, and Peng met face-to-face with a WTA representative to prove that she was safe. Simon was praised far and wide for the WTA’s principled stand, which the Chinese chose to ignore.

But in April, the WTA cried uncle and jump-started its dormant Chinese business. Simon told the Associated Press, “The stance that we took at the time was appropriate. And we stand by that. But 16 months into this, we’re convinced that our requests will not be met. And to continue with the same strategy doesn’t make sense.”

China has seven WTA events on the schedule for this fall. The financial taps will be turned on again, relieving some of the financial strain on the WTA—and perhaps adding to the player compensation fund.

The most recent development is the ongoing outreach to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, considered a pariah nation by many (Saudi Arabia is consistently ranked among the “worst of the worst” annual survey of political and civil rights by Freedom House). In February, Simon and other WTA board members visited with officials of the Public Investment Fund, which is the kingdom’s apparently bottomless well of cash which the Saudis have been using to burnish their standing in the international community—and to downplay criticism of their human rights record.

Gazing into that well has mesmerized many top ATP and WTA officials, including the WTA’s spiritual leader, Billie Jean King.

“There’s a lot of money (in Saudia Arabia),” King told The National, the Gulf region’s English language newspaper. “[It] is very important to keep having money to help the players, but also help run the WTA, run the ATP and all that.”

The way the Saudi’s successfully bulled their way into golf via the disruptive and controversial LIV Tour, has reminded many of the old expression, “money talks.”

LIV brought potential innovation and competition to the sport, which is a good thing,” said Oyer, a tennis and golf fan. “But I wish it were someone other than the Saudi government that did it.

If you don’t meet people and you don’t discuss and you don’t ask for new things to happen, they don’t. Billie Jean King

Yet while money talks, not everyone is listening. Some players and personages including John McEnroe, Andy Murray and Martina Navratilova have either declined to play in the kingdom or criticized its efforts.

“I’m totally against what they’re (Saudi Arabia) doing with sportwashing that tries to normalize their government and state, and they couldn’t pay me enough to do it,” Navratilova told the Sports Business Journal. “I hope the tennis players have more of a moral compass than the golfers do.”

That inchoate internal instrument of tennis players seems equally prone to wild swings, the direction determined less by fixed values than self-interest.

Nick Kyrgios reacted to news of talks between the ATP and the kingdom with a tweet, exclaiming, “Finally. They see the value. We are going to get paid what we deserve to get paid. Sign me up.” (Naturally, the emojis at the end were moneybags.)

Grigor Dimitrov, who has played in Saudi Arabia, was no less effusive, telling reporters at Wimbledon, “It was great. It was my first time there. I think more and more tournaments should be actually played out there in that part of the world. I think it’s great.”

Those players would certainly endorse King’s buoyant claim that the way to win hearts and minds and effect transformations in the strict Muslim kingdom is “engagement.” She told The National, “If you don’t meet people and you don’t discuss and you don’t ask for new things to happen, they don’t. . . I know when I played Bobby Riggs [in the Battle of the Sexes] for instance, 50 years ago in 1973, by beating Bobby it changed the hearts and minds of the men, more than women.”

That analogy is bizarre, but take the words of the 79-year old Godmother of the WTA in context. That Riggs match also was a part of her battle for equal prize money and gender equality. Neither of those battles has been won yet, and the one being examined here most likely won’t be until the WTA finds a formula for a healthy balance sheet. The tour recently promised its members equal pay by 2033, even at single-gender events. Oyer said that if the WTA doesn’t have revenue projections to back-up the plan, it’s “an awfully big promise.”

Whether the WTA can effect change in Saudi Arabia, or many other parts of the Arab world, is questionable at the best of times. Human rights activists and agencies haven’t exactly been doing cartwheels over “engagement” as exemplified by the LIV/PGA experiment, nor any of the kingdom’s other adventures in sportswashing. At the moment, the “engagement” argument is probably most valuable as distraction, a firewall serving to diminish criticism of the WTA (and ATP) for their interest in forming partnerships with the kingdom.

The idea of a Saudi Spring is appealing to just about everybody in the West. In the kingdom and other autocracies, outbreaks of freedom and increased rights generally seem like the worst idea ever.