WTA unveils a new strategy for the development of women’s professional tennis
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The leadership of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) has introduced a new strategy, which aims to achieve equality in the prize funds of its largest tournaments and similar competitions of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), as well as a gradual change in the calendar. At the same time, the number of tournaments that are taken into account when calculating the points of each tennis player in the world classification will increase.
The leadership of the Women’s Tennis Association, which just these days is celebrating its 50th anniversary, made a program statement about a new strategy aimed at developing women’s professional tennis. Its goal is to improve its overall level, in particular, to achieve parity in size between the prize pools of the WTA main tournaments and similar ATP competitions.
One of the main principles proclaimed by the founder of the WTA, American Billie Jean King and eight other tennis players when the organization was created in June 1973, was the struggle for full gender equality, including in relation to tennis prize money. However, in practice this idea is still far from being implemented. If this year at 61 ATP tournaments (not counting the four Grand Slam championships that have already equalized the prize money for men and women) a total of at least $145 million in prize money will be played, then the WTA figures are much more modest – 53 tournaments and $80 million, respectively.
The clearest example of the difference between the prize pools of the ATP and the WTA was the May Italian Open, where men earned a total of €7.7 million, while women earned more than half as much, only €3.5 million.
A similar situation is expected in August at the Canadian Open. There, men will compete for $6.6 million, and women for no more than $2.7 million. The only other example in history is the 2019 WTA final tournament in Shenzhen, China with a prize pool of $14 million. Men in London then played only $9 million.
The main emphasis in the WTA policy statement is on reforming the top 1000 tournament system. By 2027, the prize pools for all combined ATP and WTA events in Indian Wells, Miami, Rome, Madrid, Canada (the Canadian “masters” are held alternately in Toronto and Montreal ), Cincinnati and Beijing should become the same, and the duration of the last three tournaments from this list will increase from one week to two over the next two years. In addition, three weekly WTA 1000 tournaments will appear on the WTA calendar on an ongoing basis – two in February, in Doha and Dubai, and one more, presumably in October. The number of 500 events will increase from 13 to 17, and the 250 events will be offered a new business model that will increase regional interest in them. Over the next ten years, the WTA intends to increase the total prize pool of tournaments in the 250 category by more than a third. As for the small tournaments of category 125, which is absent in the ATP, their number will double and increase to 40.
Also in the near future there will be changes in the rules for calculating the WTA rating. If now the results of 16 tournaments are taken into account for each player, then according to the new rules, the number will increase to 18.
The application rules are also changing. In particular, at the moment only four tournaments of the 1000 category are mandatory (in Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid, Beijing). In the future, every tennis player who is ranked in any of the ten “masters” will automatically appear among its participants.
According to a member of the Board of Directors of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) Alexei Selivanenko, the new steps taken by the leadership of the WTA, headed by its current chairman Steve Simon, on the one hand, correspond to the trend of recent years, which consists in the convergence of the two rounds, on the other hand, the actions of the WTA clearly show that the financial condition of professional tennis as a single sport at the moment can be considered very promising. “Implementation of the WTA strategy will be another step towards finalizing the tennis calendar. A further increase in the number of major tournaments will be inexpedient, and potential investments in tennis will go to the qualitative development of the tennis ecosystem,” Mr. Selivanenko believes.
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