# The Grueling Economics of Tennis

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 10 Jul 2026, 15 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/c79b12db-9065-4f2b-a7b8-b483012a670d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

Some of the world’s top tennis players will face off at the Wimbledon finals this weekend. The players who make it to Centre Court have already achieved a bigger feat: a career as a tennis player. On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s Hannah Miller and The Athletic’s Matt Futterman break down what sets tennis apart from other sports and the challenges the tournaments and players face to stay profitable. Further Listening : Rafael Nadal's Retirement Is So Great He Doesn't Miss Tennis Read more: • Grand Slam prize money is enormous. The economics of tennis tournaments is complicated • Wimbledon Investors Cash In With VIP Seats Costing Over $500,000 • Matt Futterman’s book, The Cruelest Game, is available for pre-order We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. Hosted by David Gura; Produced by Julia Press; Reported by Matt Futterman, Hannah Miller; Edited by Aaron Edwards. Fact-checking by Laura Newcombe; Engineering by Alex Sugiura. Senior Producer: Naomi Shavin; Deputy Executive Producer: Julia Weaver. Executive Producer: Nicole Beemsterboer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:09] Speaker 2: The Wimbledon Finals are this weekend, the pinnacle of the
[0:12] Speaker 2: oldest and most revered tennis tournament in the world.
[0:15] Speaker 3: Tennis has its established rituals, and Wimbledon is probably the
[0:20] Speaker 3: most entrenched in those rituals.
[0:22] Speaker 2: Hannah Miller covers media for Bloomberg, and she got to
[0:25] Speaker 2: see the action up close.
[0:27] Speaker 3: The grounds are amazing. There's flowers everywhere, there's high tea.
[0:31] Speaker 3: People are allowed to bring champagne into the grounds.
[0:35] Speaker 1: Like ladies and gentlemen.
[0:36] Speaker 3: If you could avoid opening bosses of champagn when the
[0:38] Speaker 3: players are about to come on, if someone actually pops
[0:42] Speaker 3: a champagne bottle and you hear the quark, like, that's
[0:45] Speaker 3: the noise interruption, It's not necessarily people screaming.
[0:50] Speaker 2: Wimbledon brings in a lot of money. If you wanted
[0:53] Speaker 2: to attend the tournament this year without waiting hours in
[0:56] Speaker 2: the queue for cheap tickets, it could take you over
[0:58] Speaker 2: five hundred thousand dollars to secure a guaranteed seat on
[1:02] Speaker 2: center cord. That's almost double last year's price and triple
[1:06] Speaker 2: the year before. Prize money for the Marquee tournament is
[1:10] Speaker 2: also on the rise. This year, the singles champs will
[1:13] Speaker 2: each take home three point six million pounds or nearly
[1:17] Speaker 2: five million dollars. But while players in other leagues have
[1:21] Speaker 2: gained ground toward benefiting from their sports overall profitability, the athletics,
[1:25] Speaker 2: tennis reporter Matt Futterman says tennis sits in a more
[1:28] Speaker 2: complicated gray area, with athletes taking home less than twenty
[1:33] Speaker 2: percent of the revenue.
[1:35] Speaker 1: Compare that to the NBA, the NFL, Major League Baseball,
[1:39] Speaker 1: National Hockey League. All of those athletes are guaranteed by
[1:44] Speaker 1: their collective bargaining agreements about fifty percent.
[1:48] Speaker 2: Matt is the author of the forthcoming book The Cruelest Game.
[1:52] Speaker 2: He says the disjoined financial model of tennis creates a
[1:55] Speaker 2: system that can sometimes encourage players to go hard with
[1:59] Speaker 2: little payoff unless they're at the very top.
[2:02] Speaker 1: You're seeing a lot of star players break down. And
[2:05] Speaker 1: the season is too long. It's eleven months, there's no offseason,
[2:08] Speaker 1: there's no breaks. The incentive is to play all the time,
[2:11] Speaker 1: and you can't play all the time, especially now because
[2:14] Speaker 1: the game has gotten so physical, so taxing. The matches
[2:18] Speaker 1: are so much longer than they used to be. The
[2:21] Speaker 1: planet's getting hotter. It's getting harder to do their jobs.
[2:24] Speaker 1: The work conditions are difficult, and.
[2:27] Speaker 2: It's not just players. Tennis as a whole is at
[2:30] Speaker 2: a crossroads, and some key figures in the multi billion
[2:33] Speaker 2: dollar sport are pushing for change to try to bring
[2:36] Speaker 2: the business of tennis into the twenty first century.
[2:39] Speaker 1: Tennis is sort of the last frontier in terms of
[2:44] Speaker 1: change and modernization, and it is decades behind where other
[2:49] Speaker 1: sports are.
[2:53] Speaker 2: I'm David Durrett and this is the big take from
[2:55] Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Today on the show Unpacking the complicated business
[2:59] Speaker 2: of tennis, from media deals to player compensation. Can an
[3:03] Speaker 2: old school sport stay up to date in a modern economy?
[3:15] Speaker 2: Between the World Cup and the Knicks historic win in
[3:17] Speaker 2: the NBA Finals, it has been a big summer for sports.
[3:21] Speaker 2: But when it comes to the way sports are structured,
[3:23] Speaker 2: one exists on an island of its own.
[3:26] Speaker 1: Tennis is the ultimate oddball sport. It is so fractured.
[3:31] Speaker 1: It's basically the United Nations no real authority, or actually
[3:36] Speaker 1: seven or eight different authorities and governing bodies. They all
[3:40] Speaker 1: kind of hate each other.
[3:41] Speaker 2: The athletics Matt Futterman says tennis as an organized sport
[3:45] Speaker 2: has been slow to grow up. It became professionalized in
[3:48] Speaker 2: the late nineteen sixties, but.
[3:50] Speaker 1: The Grand Slam tournaments, the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon,
[3:54] Speaker 1: and the US Open, which were functioning independently, they didn't
[3:58] Speaker 1: want to give up their Eventually you had these two
[4:02] Speaker 1: things created called the ATP Tour and the WTA Tour,
[4:05] Speaker 1: which were the men's tour and the women's tour. And
[4:09] Speaker 1: then on top of all that you have the International
[4:13] Speaker 1: Tennis Federation, which is the world governing body, which is
[4:17] Speaker 1: the sort of FIFA of tennis. And so you have
[4:21] Speaker 1: this seven headed beast, all of these people who are
[4:25] Speaker 1: running these things with different agendas, fancy jobs, big salaries,
[4:31] Speaker 1: and while it would make a lot of sense for
[4:34] Speaker 1: them to come together, I've really never known a sports
[4:38] Speaker 1: executive who negotiated himself or herself out of a fancy
[4:42] Speaker 1: job and a big salary.
[4:44] Speaker 2: That fractured landscape means it's hard for the sport to
[4:47] Speaker 2: make deals in the way most other sports do. Grand
[4:50] Speaker 2: Slams make a ton of money from media deals, but
[4:53] Speaker 2: smaller tournaments, the scores of games on the ATP or
[4:56] Speaker 2: the WTA Tours don't come close.
[4:59] Speaker 1: They've done it an absolutely horrendous job of pooling their
[5:03] Speaker 1: media rights, so they really devalue themselves. They compete with
[5:08] Speaker 1: each other for both media deals for advertising, and that
[5:12] Speaker 1: drives the price down.
[5:14] Speaker 2: What does it mean for a corporate sponsor interested in
[5:18] Speaker 2: backing tennis having the kind of fractured landscape that you described.
[5:22] Speaker 1: It is so hard for a corporate sponsor to get
[5:27] Speaker 1: the value out of tennis that it gets from another sport.
[5:32] Speaker 1: You take a company, I'm adams to pick one out
[5:34] Speaker 1: of the air that has had a big deal with
[5:37] Speaker 1: Major League Baseball Bank of America. I think they have
[5:41] Speaker 1: deals or they've had a deal with the league and
[5:44] Speaker 1: then a presence with just about every other team, and
[5:48] Speaker 1: that's basically sort of one stop shopping. There's no way
[5:51] Speaker 1: to do that in tennis. I was having a conversation
[5:54] Speaker 1: with one of the top executives at BNP Pariba, which
[5:57] Speaker 1: is probably the biggest sponsor of tennis in the world.
[6:02] Speaker 1: And you know, whether topic secutivity is that I have
[6:05] Speaker 1: something like sixty five or sixty seven different contracts that
[6:08] Speaker 1: I have to sign with different entities in tennis, and
[6:12] Speaker 1: that's different media companies, different tournaments, different tours, different organizations,
[6:18] Speaker 1: and so when you are a big sponsor and you're
[6:24] Speaker 1: looking about how to spend your money, you know you
[6:26] Speaker 1: want to capture a big audience and you want to
[6:29] Speaker 1: do it as easily as possible. Tennis is a hugely
[6:32] Speaker 1: desirable audience, but they make it really, really, really hard
[6:36] Speaker 1: for the people that are interested in tennis to connect
[6:41] Speaker 1: with it and to partner with it.
[6:43] Speaker 2: If you're streaming Wimbledon in the US right now, you're
[6:46] Speaker 2: likely watching on ESPN, which has exclusive streaming rights to
[6:50] Speaker 2: the tournament through twenty thirty five. Bloomberg Media reporter Hannah
[6:54] Speaker 2: Miller says Grand Slams like Wimbledon are hot commodities for
[6:58] Speaker 2: the companies vuying from me deal.
[7:00] Speaker 3: Tennis is set apart from other sports and that there
[7:03] Speaker 3: are these must watch events, and you see that with
[7:06] Speaker 3: the Slam tournaments. For tennis fans, those are going to
[7:09] Speaker 3: be musty TV for them. So that does make it
[7:12] Speaker 3: an easy sell.
[7:14] Speaker 2: Viewership has been on the rise, and so has participation.
[7:17] Speaker 2: The number of Americans who play tennis has grown almost
[7:20] Speaker 2: sixty percent since twenty nineteen.
[7:23] Speaker 3: COVID has actually helped increase people's interests in the sport
[7:26] Speaker 3: whether watching at home or even trying it for themselves.
[7:29] Speaker 3: It's an easy sport to understand, you know, when you
[7:32] Speaker 3: have one person winning over the other, there aren't any ties.
[7:35] Speaker 3: It's just two people grinding it out.
[7:38] Speaker 2: And despite this fractured tennis landscape, Matt Futterman says a
[7:42] Speaker 2: rising tide in the sport does lift some ships. Even
[7:46] Speaker 2: though Serena Williams was eliminated in the first round this year,
[7:49] Speaker 2: her match set an ESPN record for Day two audience.
[7:53] Speaker 2: Another great match in this weekend's finals could help drive
[7:56] Speaker 2: interest in the sport's smaller tournaments or get more people playing.
[8:00] Speaker 1: People are still talking about the five set, five and
[8:04] Speaker 1: a half hour battle that Carlos Alkaraz and Janick Center
[8:09] Speaker 1: had last year at the French Open, the same way
[8:13] Speaker 1: people still talk about the Roger Federer Rafael Nadal Wimbledon
[8:17] Speaker 1: two thousand and eight match. These sort of epic matches
[8:21] Speaker 1: have a way of just capturing attention and grabbing people.
[8:27] Speaker 1: They produce stars, they've put tennis sort of in the consciousness.
[8:32] Speaker 1: I don't think there's any question that tennis is having
[8:35] Speaker 1: a moment, and you know that's down to people like
[8:39] Speaker 1: Cocoa Goff and Alcoraz and Center and Igish Fiantek and
[8:43] Speaker 1: also Zindeya who you know starred in Challengers.
[8:46] Speaker 2: But for players, good news at the top doesn't always
[8:50] Speaker 2: trickle down to everyone else that's coming up. Making money
[9:02] Speaker 2: as a professional tennis player is uniquely hard compared to
[9:05] Speaker 2: other sports.
[9:06] Speaker 3: It's very interesting the contrast between the highest end athletes
[9:10] Speaker 3: and the lowest end. I think in other sports, if
[9:12] Speaker 3: you're on an NFL team, you're doing very well, even
[9:14] Speaker 3: if you're on the bench and not a starter.
[9:16] Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Hannah Miller explains that's because in the NFL, you're
[9:20] Speaker 2: on a team, which provides for some of your needs
[9:22] Speaker 2: as an athlete. Tennis players, on the other hand.
[9:25] Speaker 3: It's very individualistic. Everything is on you or you and
[9:29] Speaker 3: your partner. If you're playing doubles.
[9:31] Speaker 1: You have a lot of overhead.
[9:32] Speaker 2: That's the athletics. Tennis reporter Matt Futterman again.
[9:35] Speaker 1: Your agent is taking something on the order of twenty
[9:38] Speaker 1: percent of all your endorsement deals. You've got to pay
[9:41] Speaker 1: a coach, you probably have to pay a physiotherapist. And
[9:44] Speaker 1: remember you earn money in pre tax dollars. You payout
[9:49] Speaker 1: salaries in post tax dollars, You've got a lot of
[9:52] Speaker 1: travel expenses. You've got to find a place to train.
[9:55] Speaker 1: It's the polar opposite about being a member of a team,
[9:58] Speaker 1: where the team takes care of those expenses. In tennis,
[10:01] Speaker 1: you're an independent contractor and it's all on you.
[10:05] Speaker 2: That makes the sport extremely top heavy.
[10:08] Speaker 1: I mean, if you're Carlos Alkaraz or Yannick Center, you're
[10:11] Speaker 1: probably making in the neighborhood of one hundred million dollars
[10:14] Speaker 1: a year, but the bulkal that is going to be
[10:17] Speaker 1: with endorsement deals and appearance fees and all sorts of
[10:21] Speaker 1: things like that. So they are really in another stratosphere.
[10:24] Speaker 1: The women. I think Cocoa Goff is the highest paid player,
[10:28] Speaker 1: and she's up in the thirties in terms of millions
[10:32] Speaker 1: of dollars. The rest of the top ten you're still
[10:35] Speaker 1: doing quite well. You know, you should be in the
[10:38] Speaker 1: eight figures, but then you have a pretty good fallof
[10:41] Speaker 1: where you're getting into single digit millions. No, I'm not
[10:45] Speaker 1: playing any violins for any of these people. You get
[10:47] Speaker 1: outside the top fifty, you start to get worried about
[10:50] Speaker 1: falling outside of the top eighty in it because Once
[10:53] Speaker 1: you're outside the top eighty, you're probably around breaking even.
[10:59] Speaker 2: Start to move out side the top one hundred and
[11:01] Speaker 2: you're likely losing money on the game itself. But unlike
[11:05] Speaker 2: some other sports, Hannah Miller says, one big tournament win
[11:09] Speaker 2: can really make a difference for a lower ranked athlete.
[11:12] Speaker 3: There's a great example of this with Arthur Ferry, who
[11:16] Speaker 3: is it's a cinderella story. He's a brit who had
[11:19] Speaker 3: an amazing quarterfinal win over a top ranked player. He
[11:23] Speaker 3: is gone overnight from being a no name to one
[11:27] Speaker 3: of the biggest names in the UK. Right now, he
[11:29] Speaker 3: will make at least nine hundred thousand pounds just from
[11:34] Speaker 3: getting to this point in the tournament. If you look
[11:36] Speaker 3: at his winnings prior, that dwarfs what he's gotten before.
[11:40] Speaker 3: And he's also now a great target for sponsors and
[11:43] Speaker 3: that'll be another great source of income as he goes along.
[11:48] Speaker 2: It's that point, the sponsorship deals that are never guaranteed
[11:52] Speaker 2: but a possibility after a match or after retirement, that
[11:56] Speaker 2: creates a model that keeps players in the game.
[11:59] Speaker 1: The model for this is Arnold Palmer in the nineteen sixties,
[12:04] Speaker 1: and you know what, Mark McCormick who was the founder
[12:08] Speaker 1: of IMG, which is sort of the first great sports
[12:12] Speaker 1: and entertainment conglomerate and really the guy who made the
[12:16] Speaker 1: sports business. And I think you know, what McCormick and
[12:20] Speaker 1: Palmer understood was that he could really be sort of
[12:25] Speaker 1: the first great sports brand. He became, you know, something
[12:29] Speaker 1: bigger in retirement than really he ever was during his
[12:34] Speaker 1: playing career, especially from a financial point of view, and
[12:38] Speaker 1: that has really been the model. You Roger Federer is
[12:42] Speaker 1: making far more money now than he ever did as
[12:46] Speaker 1: a tennis player.
[12:48] Speaker 2: What would it take to kind of change the structure
[12:50] Speaker 2: that you've described, this fractured structure of professional tennis to
[12:53] Speaker 2: make it work more in favor of the players.
[12:56] Speaker 1: It's going to take a court in the US or
[12:59] Speaker 1: a regular tory body in Europe to tell tennis that
[13:04] Speaker 1: it is in violation of antitrust rules and it needs
[13:10] Speaker 1: to reach a settlement with the players.
[13:14] Speaker 2: A group of players is trying to force that change
[13:17] Speaker 2: by suing the ATP and WTA tournaments and the Grand Slams.
[13:21] Speaker 2: It's called the Professional Tennis Players Association, or the PTPA.
[13:26] Speaker 1: They have filed an anti trust suit, essentially charging collusion
[13:29] Speaker 1: that the organizing bodies of tennis basically work together with
[13:34] Speaker 1: each other to create essentially a cartel, which is what
[13:39] Speaker 1: all sports leagues are. Ultimately, they are cartels. The difference
[13:42] Speaker 1: between them is that if you take the NFL, it
[13:46] Speaker 1: has a collective bargaining agreement and the players have given
[13:49] Speaker 1: their blessing for that cartel to exist. They're allowing them
[13:54] Speaker 1: to break antitrust rules. They're allowing them to set things
[13:57] Speaker 1: like salary caps. These are antitrust lawsuit that happened or
[14:01] Speaker 1: had the potential to happen, or threatened to happen with
[14:04] Speaker 1: the other sports decades ago, and they've settled them out,
[14:08] Speaker 1: and now they're going on in tennis.
[14:11] Speaker 2: With the PTPA suit and broader questions about the future
[14:14] Speaker 2: of tennis's business model still in flux. Hannah Miller says
[14:17] Speaker 2: the athleticism and stories the sport generates still keep fans
[14:21] Speaker 2: coming back, and that love of the game keeps players
[14:25] Speaker 2: coming back.
[14:25] Speaker 3: To Many people would consider Serena Williams to be the
[14:30] Speaker 3: Queen the Goat of tennis with the essential goat. Yes,
[14:33] Speaker 3: she didn't perform as well as she would have wanted,
[14:36] Speaker 3: as her fans would have wanted, but that's not to
[14:39] Speaker 3: say that she's not going to come back again. So
[14:42] Speaker 3: I'm holding out hope for the US Open. We'll see
[14:45] Speaker 3: what happens.
[14:50] Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
[14:53] Speaker 2: The show is hosted by Me, Sarah Holder, and Juan hat.
[14:56] Speaker 2: The show is made by Aaron Edwards, David Fox, Jeff Grocott,
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