It took more than three decades after the founding of the Women’s Tennis Association for all four Grand Slam tournaments to agree to give the same prize money to female and male players. Now the women’s tour is pledging to make sure its athletes also get identical paychecks at some other top-tier events in the coming years.
The WTA announced Tuesday that it is revising its season calendar and rules about which players must enter certain tournaments, while also setting up what the organization based in St. Petersburg, Florida, called a “pathway to equal prize money.”
The plan is to have matching payouts across all rounds of singles at the joint WTA-ATP 1000 and 500 events — the two levels right below the four Slams — by 2027, and to make sure that single-week WTA-only 1000 and 500 events that are being played at the same time, but at different sites, as their ATP-only 1000 and 500 equivalents are offering the same money as those counterparts by 2033.
All changes will need to be approved by the WTA board of directors in August, something the tour expects to happen. The proposals include increasing the number of 1000 tournaments to 10, with events in Beijing (2024), Cincinnati (2025) and Canada (2025) expanding to two weeks with larger fields; new rules to boost participation by leading players in the biggest events; and making singles rankings based on best 18 results — not just best 16 — plus the WTA Finals.
One example of the sort of pay discrepancy going on currently: When Iga Swiatek won the 2022 Italian Open, she received a check for a little more than 330,000 euros (about $365,000), which was less than half of the roughly 835,000 euros (more than $900,000) that Novak Djokovic earned for winning the men’s title in Rome that year.
This April, Italian tennis federation president Angelo Binaghi said that the country’s main tournament aims to give the same prize money to women and men as of 2025. The WTA signaled its intention to arrive at Tuesday’s news by responding to Binaghi’s statement with this comment back then: “It is our hope to see this commitment achieved at more WTA events.”
Billie Jean King, who was the leading voice when the modern WTA was founded in 1973, says she was motivated to help create a women’s professional tour after earning $600 for her 1970 championship in Italy, almost $3,000 less than Ilie Nastase was paid for his run to the trophy there.
The US Open was the first major tournament to pay women and men the same, starting in 1973. The Australian Open permanently established equal prize money in 2001; the French Open gave its two singles champions the same amount in 2006 and spread that to every round in 2007; Wimbledon committed to equal pay across the board in 2007.
“Fifty years after the players found strength in unity, I’m proud the WTA continues to be a global leader focused on providing opportunities,” King said, “and hope that women in other sports and walks of life are inspired by its example.”