Top tennis players are unhappy with the Roland Garros prize-money distribution for the second year in a row. The organisers of the Paris major, while increasing the actual size of the tournament’s prize fund, are at the same time reducing the share of revenue that goes to players: since 2024, it has fallen from 15.5% to 14.3%. Simply maintaining the previous proportion, even with the percentage kept at its earlier level, would have been enough to avoid talk of a potential boycott. But the organisers of the French Open know how to count every last centime. One recalls the episode when spectators were not refunded on a rainy day, and players were even made to continue their matches in drizzle, just to reach the two hours of viewing time necessary and sufficient to keep the gate money.
Curiously, for the second season running, the complaint is aimed specifically at the Roland Garros bosses, who allocate the highest percentage to players among the Slams. And here we arrive at the absence of a unified governance structure. Tennis, in effect, has seven heads feeding at the trough: the four majors, led by national federations, plus the ATP, WTA and ITF. Now the players want more from Paris, pointing precisely to the fact that in the ATP and WTA they receive 22% of tour revenues.
But there will be no boycott, because there is simply no players’ union, or any comparable body, capable of acting in a centralised way. The PTPA — the Professional Tennis Players Association, created by Djokovic and Pospisil as an alternative players’ union — lasted a little over six years before the strongest player on the planet left it. The early ideas behind the organisation, including the protection of lower-ranked players, never reached a fundamentally new level during its existence. Novak, meanwhile, left the PTPA after realising that his name was being used for purposes far removed from those he had originally intended. Here, the stumbling blocks were governance and transparency.
Comparing tennis players’ earnings with those in American leagues does not hold up. Income generated within clubs is, in principle, impossible to compare with an individual sport. But if players still want to make that comparison, then it would be far more logical for tennis players to file claims against the ATP and WTA and ask them for the same 50% of season revenues. The tours generate income throughout the year; the Slams do so for only two weeks.
As Rafael Nadal once said, no player can be bigger than the tournament. In 2022, he was talking about the Novak Djokovic saga, when Novak was barred from entering Australia in the post-Covid year without being vaccinated. That phrase is just as relevant in the context of the coming Roland Garros: if the top 10, or even the top 100, do not take the court, the next players in line will take their places — players who dream of competing at the Slams, and who will do so within the money on offer. The current situation is easy to compare to an apartment-building group chat deciding some crucial issue: there will always be those who are indifferent and go with the flow, as well as those who have not bothered to understand the matter at all.
A boycott requires coordinated action, and the players simply do not have time for that. After all, they play tennis 11 months a year; there is barely any room to properly deal with the issues that arise. Sinner, for instance, can sign as many petitions as he likes and be one of the guys within the professional community, but his own goals will always come first. Given his earnings and the fact that he still lacks a title in Paris, money will certainly not be a reason for him to skip a tournament that is his main target of the season. Tennis is far too individual a sport to function as a team.
