Enabling Alternative Prize Money Distributions in Tennis
I recently stumbled upon an article regarding some systemic conversations about the ATP and WTA tours. Players are requesting an increase in prize money pools, contributions to pensions, etc. These dialogues are happening directly between players and tournament officials, which makes sense.
Another topic they brought to the officials is the distribution of the prize money pool among the players. For this topic, however, I am struggling to see why they are waiting for the officials’ approval to start the change. Before I explain, here is a related excerpt from the article:
The WTA Players’ Council is understood to have sent a counterproposal to the All England Club saying the prize allocation was too top-heavy and suggesting more money be given to players knocked out before the last 16, but it was rejected. A similar dialogue took place with the US Tennis Federation in August before the US Open, which offered the biggest purse in tennis history at £63.8m, with the same outcome.
Last month, Coco Gauff said of prize money breakdown at the grand slam tournaments: “I think it’s important for the whole ecosystem of the sport. We’re not talking about just raising the prize money for the champion, but trickling all the way down to qualies.”
It’s surprising and sad that the “200th best player, 300th best player are struggling to make ends meet” and I’m glad players are proposing solutions, but do they really need to wait for the officials’ approval for a more balanced prize money distribution? Can’t players make money transfers among themselves, where the ones who received disproportionately more prize money send the extra portion of their prize money to the ones who received disproportionately less prize money? Of course, if officials get convinced and the tournament changes its prize money rules, the problem would be resolved much more thoroughly. But, having this prize money exchange between players can solve a nontrivial percentage of the problem, and it would get better and better as more players join the compact. If solving the problem 100% will likely take years, wouldn’t it be great to be able to solve it by, say, 30%, instead of staying at 0% the whole time?
This is not some kind of a charity donation system. Still, I understand that it might feel awkward for players to send money to each other, but there are fairly professional and dignified ways to handle this. The entire process can be managed with an online portal that 1) cuts the trace between the senders and receivers, and 2) handles all the payments automatically (not much effort needed from the players).
Here is an outline of how such an online portal could work:
- Before the tournament starts, if a player wants to join the compact, they log into the portal and set their ideal prize money distribution. This means that the player indicates, for each round in the tournament, how much someone should receive if they get eliminated in that round.
- Signups close right before the beginning of the tournament.
- During and at the end of the tournament, players receive prize money from the tournament organizers. Those who did not join the compact don’t have to do anything after getting the money from the officials.
- At the end of the tournament, for each player who signed the compact, the portal calculates whether that player received more money than they thought they deserved to receive (they have indicated their ideal prize money distribution before the tournament). Then, the portal distributes any extra prize money among the players (the ones in the compact) who, (again) based on that player’s assessment, received less than what they should have received.
There are many flavors of money distribution that could be tried here. For example, we can give a player the option to share their prize money only with players in their part of the draw, or with players who lost before a certain round.
Also, notice that this system does not require the participation of every player in the tournament. This flexibility ensures that a pilot can be run with a small group of players.