The HARSH Business Of Tennis... 

Novak Djokovic was the first who, ten or more years ago, raised his voice and stood up for lower-ranked tennis players, and with that act he became a sworn enemy of the people who manage the ATP. In 2020, together with the Canadian Vasek Pospisil, he founded the PTPA organization. The PTPA calls itself "an organization created BY the players FOR the players" to "support, protect and advance players' well being on and off the court."

This is why Tennis is called: Rich people's sport. 1. The vast majority of Pros come from rich families 2. Only wealthy families can afford to dump a lot of money into their children & hiring the best most expensive personnels to expedite their child's Tennis EXP. 3. Normal kids can only learn by themselves, with friends, or taking tennis courses for regular folks. 4. Only prodigy normal kids can make Pro without spending lavish amounts of money. 5. Those lucky enough to make Pro will have to compete against other higher EXP rich Pros. 6. It's hard enough to beat rich Pros with more EXP. Even when they do, the prize money is too little to maintain their Pro lifestyle. 7. In order to maintain a Pro lifestyle with limit wealth, the individual must take time away from farming Tennis EXP to work at a job. Whereas a rich Pro can afford to focus solely on Tennis.

In Japan, pro tennis players usually belong to a team, often a major tennis school, or some big company. Thus, they receive a base salary, a place to train and partners, which then can be complemented with other endorsements, prize money, etc.

I cannot imagine how many talented young players had to quit just bcs they didnt have enough money . I am proud of my countryman Novak , now being rich he could easily forget about strugles of younger players , but he didnt . Empathy is a magic word that seems many lack of 😑... Bravo Nole , your heart is pure gold

I think it’s a good idea to play division one college like Isner, McDonald, Steve Johnson and others. You get a degree while playing high level tennis. Then you can actually start a career if the tennis doesn’t work out. And unfortunately, it likely won’t work out for most.

So it makes sense economically for players to fix matches…

I used to play professional tennis for a while and even got the chance to play in 25k tours, but it was exactly the financial aspect that made me quitted in the end. Many people would say you're not making good money because you're not a good player, but the harsh fact is that many players have to quit before they can be a good player because of money. Just like most of the other careers, regardless if you're talented, you still have to do trainings and gain experience to become better and make better money. For example, if you're a programmer, regardless if you're talented, you still have to learn programming at school, then start from a junior programmer before you can finally become senior programmer and start making good money. Same as in tennis career, you have to learn to play tennis just like learning programming at school, start playing small tours just like being a junior programmer, then finally compete in big tours just like being a senior programmer. Earning little to no money in small tours is just like asking you to move to London and be a junior programmer for free, not many people can bare with the costs. I don't think it's a good idea to cut down the prize money on big tours, cause big prize money is one way to attract audience. It's just like people are buying and excited about lottery because of the big prize money, if there's no big prize money in big tours, people will be less interested. What ATP, WTA and ITF should do is to improve local engagement, so more money can flow into small tours. Right now in most of the small tours, most of the costs are being totally covered by the organiser itself, with maybe a little help from the local government. And this is making ITF hard to increase the prize money, because if you simply increase the prize money and ask the organiser to cover all the costs, lots of organisers are going to leave. What they should do is to improve local engagement, so that more money can flow into the tours from other resourses, so the orgainsers won't feel huge pressure even if the prize money is increased. To put it in simple words, re-distributing the existing prize money could improve the situation in short term, but it's not a solution in long run. It's just like asking senior programmers to be paid less so junior programmers can be paid more, which is not realistic. What a company should do is to attract more investors and customers into the business, so that the company can grow and pays better to their employee.

Entry fees are bogus. Feel like at minimum tournaments should provide a stipend for travel and hotel fees for any players that don't have to qualify, especially at the lower levels. Without the players, you don't have a tournament.

You should have mentioned that the main treshold for surviving financially as a tennis player is to reach a ranking high enough to make it to Grand Slam qualifying. The cut off is just above the 200 mark and losing in R1 of qualifying of the US Open 23 gave a player a whopping 21,000 USD. That's the same amount as winning a Challenger 125 which is much more difficult. Cost of travelling and accommodation also varies a lot between countries, there is no way the average future players spends 500 USD per week on accommodation or 1,000 USD per tournament in travel costs. Some tournaments have subsidized hospitality and Slams have per diem payments towards hotel costs. The million dollar question is how many players globally should be paid enough to break even. I think 300-350 is a reasonable number in order to avoid talents chosing other careers.

The challenge with unions in the traditional sense, for an individual sport like tennis, is players are basically funding their competitors. Players at the top, with money, who are best able to fund the union don't want to support and develop players below them to come up and challenge them. There's a huge conflict of interest. One positive is a tennis player union may help to negotiate and pressure tennis associations/tournaments to increase prize money and perks that any player can compete for. However, as competitive the tennis sport is, once the union supports individual players to compete it will break down.

This is an important video! The grand slams don't pay the players enough. Novak Djokovic is very vocal he created a union with Vasek Pospisil. The slams need to pay players more money. More top players need to stand up. It is harsh truth pro tennis you need a lot of money and talent to succeed. The tennis players we see are the lucky ones. Good video.

I had a friend playing professionally tennis on the tour, and after she told me what she had to go through just to get the money to enter the tournament, I started to talk to other professionals about this issue and many other issues that professionals were facing. I tried to help start a professional players fund to help them compete, and pay for medical treatment if injured. This was done locally and I this idea I had with others was back in the late 80s while I was still in High School. The plan didn’t work out the way I wanted it to, because the adults that were organizing the association, were complete scumbags that stole the money out of fund! So Novak is right, the players need a functional players association that represents everyone and represents both women and men from all rankings. It’s a disgrace that the women professional tennis players literally have to have a full time job just to survive and pay bills, not including training, traveling, and fees to enter the tournaments. It’s a disgrace, and the players should look into MLB players association, which is one of the most powerful unions in the world, when it comes to organizing and taking care of their own. Great job on the video!

The problem is even worse, just to enter tournaments( qualification) ( 15 k ,25 k) you need to have some ranking, otherwise you find yourself always in alternates. And even if you get a chance to play qualification, probably you will lose in first round , as no experience and pressure.

More attention should be put on this issue for tennis players. nice video

Exactly spot on! ATP lower ranks are tough. I can say it’s a great learning experience for the harshness of Life!

This situation of lack of money in lower ranked players is nothing new. For many years the life of the touring tennis pro (used to be sometimes called "tennis bums") was a hard one. Lots of bus rides, sleeping in cheap hotels, maybe get lucky and get a free room from a tourny volunteer. Doing laundry on the cheap. Stringing your own rackets. But I really miss those days. What an adventure it seems now. I bet most of the guys who chased that dream and toured professionally without making it still wouldn't trade those memories for some corporate job. They'd probably do it again. For as long as I can remember there was never much money at the bottom. But, what changed most is how much money there is at the top. The level of tennis from a 200th ranked player isn't that much from the top ten guys. If you watched them practice the average fan might night even be able to tell who the top guy is and who the 200th guy is. I think college tennis can be a potential solution for players with pro ambition.

I noticed that this video was probably created during or right after what was called the Western & Southern Open (now the Cincinnati Open). The give away - the W&S Fila shirt that you were wearing! I'm a volunteer there and we do it for the pure enjoyment and love of the game and that particular tournament. We pay our own way - no hotel rooms, no free meals (although we are give a small food allowance for each day we volunteer). We volunteer regardless ... because we enjoy it. Volunteers come there from all parts of the country.

The system is clearly broken but things maybe looking up. The work that the PTPA is doing is slowly making changes. I just hope more players come onboard and support the efforts.

Outstanding Video! Thanks!

The residential coaching programs for 15, 16 year olds in the US cost parents about 40K/year. Few scholarships. And to even apply, you have to be in the finals at Kalamazoo, or have many ITC points by age 14, so you had to afford coaching to get that good, travel to get there at age 13 or 14, and so of course fans have missed out on tens of thousands of potential great players ever developing because they were not born into wealth. As a fan, attend a nearby ITC or Challenger event to financially support the system. Or donate to the USTA scholarship fund, if you can. Or, if you play, volunteer to coach 9 and 10 year old players. Someone like Taylor Fritz, heir to the May Company fortune, had lots of options. Some kid with great potential in your own town may have none. Thanks for bringing attention to this situation.

Novak Djokovic made a big stink about this problem on the world stage a long time ago. He's awesome!

It is so complicated and complex that querying the basic structure is a daunting task to say the least.. One thing for sure the climb to the top is an arduous one so if that is your dream be aware of the various routes to get there..

It reminds me of the cheap old days on the PGA tour when even top golfers had to travel by car and share motel accommodations. Head to head elimination must play a part in dragging things out versus simply posting a score against a field.

Players union like the PTPA is a good first step

Great effort and all, but very general. I researched this subject a while ago and have detailed stats for 2019 (pre-covid): 78% of all prize money goes to the top 100. A player needs to be ranked 300-400 to roughly break even (35-50k a year), not including side jobs. Over the whole career, 76% of ATP players make below $20k per year (should be better these days with the increased prizes).

Don’t forget about sponsorship money, sneaker deals, other brand deals, there is still a lot of money as long as you are actually good

The misconception is to call low ranks and low prize tournaments "professional tennis". Being a professional means making a living with something, and when you're not on a level to make a living then you're an amateur and not a pro.

Something I was talking with my coach, is that tennis player can play for clubs, like Real Madrid, Atlanta United, most of those soccer teams are clubs, an have Basketball teams and even other solo sports like athleticism, for instance, the Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas, world record of triple jump on the Olympics, she comes from a poor area in Venezuela but was discovered trained and paid by Barcelona fútbol club, and represent the club even when in the Olympics she represent Venezuela and not Spain. Tennis should adopt that kind of club engagements

10:13 Sorry @Tennis Plus, but Monte Carlo is not in Switzerland but in the Principality of Monaco in the south of France.

13:46 the media often don't portray this side of the story, they would just criticize Novak for being irresponsible of starting tennis during the pandemic and ignoring the other side of the argument that there were struggling players finding it hard to make a living in such times.

The first and foremost requisite is to make futures and challenger tournaments free of entry charge... Then the ATP should find a way to distribute revenues from TV stations for the top 500 players, both in men's and women's categories...

This is really similar to the music business, great video!

I've often wondered what instituting a car racing constructor's championship style format where teams, for lack of a better term, field and train players and are awarded based on their point total at the end of the season. It would still be individual, as is car racing, but the funding would largely be determined by the agregate. You'd have to work out eligibility rules and breakdowns, but Ideally you'd incentivize these orgs to have players winning tournaments at every skill level, before they "rank out" of a given classification.

Being a Professional tennis player, means you might have to live in a van down by the river!

I think one opportunity for lower ranked players is to start an online business similar to Felix at the tennis brothers and Simon Freund. Both of these guys run a YT channel that is documenting their tennis journey. Felix's YT channel is booming and it's paying for his tennis career with a potential to earn him big £££££ in the future. If you dont have rich parents or a sponsor to fund your early tennis career, doing what Felix and Simon are doing is a viable way to fund your tennis career.

In germany there are like 14 or 16 itf tournaments, and there is a german wide travel ticket for 49 euros a month. So travel cost is under 600 euros yearly for unlimited travel within germany. Seems pretty good compared to 1k per tournament.

Excellent piece, really well made!

This past fall I attended a Challenger Event. During the week, the corporate box seats at court level were mostly empty and general ticket holders sat uncomfortably in rocking aluminum benches. I suspect they are hoping to grow the event but they are certainly not putting in the practical effort to engage the tennis fan. By the way - a boor by the name of Benoit Paire showed up and likely soured those open minded folks wanting to give tennis a chance.

i have a friend who is about 900-1000 ranked atp player. i agree they have to increase the money for these player of atp events, however my friend is making decent money from the local club he is playing at. the club supports him and contracted him as he is the best player in the club by far. what i am saying is these players are not making money just from the atp events. *his expenses are covered too.

It’s tough when you have a dream and pursue it against your financial self-interest. Also, keep in mind that coming up through the Junior ranks isn’t cheap either. 😊

Maybe being paid a weekly amount for being ranked 100-500 in the world can help the players have cash to make it to the top 100 where there can be opportunities for sponsors to cover the cost.

The 800th ranked footballer (soccer) would be in one of the top leagues in Europe earning millions.

For the normal person when he said “just $15,000” it sounds great but when you put it into tennis players and sport players then compared to the fees to get to that place it is downright disgusting.

Is there any reason for basically ignoring Novak and everything he has done for tennis players and using Alcaraz video material all the way through the video?

It's a shame that the tournament sponsors don't provide some things like at least food & lodging for a weekend.

Can anyone answer if Bernard Tomic or Carol Zhao are making enough currently to even earn a good living? Or if they are even breaking even? Thanks.

Every other skill or activity that is over populated experiences that same thing right? I mean thousands of thousands of hopeful actors/actresses/models/musicians travel to LA, NYC, London every year to make it rich as the next Michael Jackson/Britney Spears/Jack Nicholson/Whoever. Many of them have to wait tables, become carpenters, in order to just survive. Here's the smart thing, choose a profession that is NOT overpopulated, but still highly sought after.

I can't believe that they don't even pay for flights and accomodation to the players they invite to their tournament!

Tennis players should earn a salary based on their ranking. In the english premier league a part of the earnings for television rights are distributed among the teams. Being the players the main attraction for the fans they could get to an agreement if they push the tornaments... (I'm a ignorant on this subject and tennis in general)

I had to leave a comment. It was a fabulous description of sad affairs behind the curtain.

wow...never knew... That's crazy.

Tennis players who are are ranked outside 400 struggle to meet ends indivudual athletes like Swimmers,wrestlers,teakwondist,judoist....wait guys you actually earn money?

A player at our club in Toronto, managed to qualify for the us open in 2019…he won three rounds which got him a first round evening match with Federer. $55000 US$ supported him for the remainder of the year, but a year later he has literally no money, and lives back in India.

This is why if you want to make a living in professional sports, team sports are a better bet. If you are a ranked 200 tennis player you can barely survive. If you play American football, if you are number 1500, you still make $750,000 a year.

As the saying goes: "If Tennis was a city no-one would want to live in it."

This video keeps showing Rafa and Roger, 2 players who could have helped change the system yet did nothing, too afraid to lose their millions. Dominic thiem criticized the PTPA yet he helped no one.

same for golfers

If Tennis does not unite and protect the survivability of their professional tennis players, the sport will lose out talent to other individual sports like Pickle Ball, Squash, and other sports.

It's so sad to know that young, talented people play professional tennis hungry. Unfortunately, it's a sport for rich people only.

They choose to do this, the world would not miss them.

Novak is the onlyyyy person at very top who can help these players

Go PTPA, Go Djokovic take down selfish fedal and evil greedy corporate establishment in tennis.

Needs to be more team-based competition. Then money for more and more security.

Aspiring tennis players need to have a Plan B. Go to college and get a degree while competing in the NCAA. If you are exceptional, go try your luck out on the pro. circuit. If that doesn't work out, one can be a teaching pro at some club or resort. I played tennis for Rutgers. One of the guys on our team got a job and worked for Club Med as a teaching pro. and later settled in as a pro. at a local tennis club. He made a decent living, nothing glamorous, although he said working at Club Med was one of the highlights of his career.

they will be totally fine. it's just they can't make money from atp tour. they'd get very decent money for teaching tennis / being a coach / running an academy. for sure they won't live a gorgeous life as these top players but it's already amazing enough compared to ordinary people

without sponsors, they basically pay to play until a breakout event, if it even happens

THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN.....

Great video and all of this true + a lot worse which isn’t mentioned in the video. Tennis is a brutal sport if you don’t have $. Simple Sad world Sad sport

The CEO of the apt alone makes $1 million a year in salary, not including bonuses and expenses like a company car. Top heavy, like most companies, who have a bloated executive suite.

ITF and the challenger tour should be seen as a stepping stone towards the ATP. Grinding these tournaments without any prospect should be a red flag to not continue this journey, since your simply not good enough to compete with the big guys. Tennis is a cruel sport were only the top 100 can make a living. College/university tennis should be the future of young talented tennis players. It has produced a lot of regulars on the ATP tour (Shelton, Eubanks, Wolf etc.) and players on the challenger tour (Walton, Svajda etc.) that will eventually play ATP and Grand slams. With college tennis you can simply see if you can make it or you should rather continue your education and have a job and play tennis as a hobby like Pecotic.

Give them more of the earnings it's criminal!!!

ATP ITF & WTA forming 1 organization should be the final aim. Things will fall under place after that

Demand and supply: as a casual Tennis fan, I watch only competitions that involve the top 10. Otherwise, I am indifferent.

Professional football/soccer players sitting on the bench are often not “below average” or “mediocre”. There is a finite number of positions on the field at any one time, and at some point, those players need to be substituted or rested. That does not mean their replacements are “below average” or “mediocre”. It’s a *team* sport, the clue is in the name. This goes for most elite team sports, so it’s an ignorant and narrow-minded thing to say without basic context.

Play doubles Neal Skupski and Ken Skupski made a living playing doubles.. They have the right mindset and good honest professionals from Liverpool... Liverpool is a soccer city.

mediocre players football players are barely making minumin wage also. a numer 1000 atp player is compareble to a leage 2 player

Great Video!

I believe the numbers are 95% of players hardly earn enough to consider themselves in the above average earnings level. Very very very few pros ever make a good loving playing tennis. The goal they have is create a name for themselves so they can teach at local clubs for an extremely high rate. I’ve seen ATP pros charge as much as $250/hr for one on one lessons. Pros are also able to travel to multiple tennis clubs to teach and they typically get the majority of lesson money (as much as 80%) since the clubs make money by promoting an ATP player as a coach. If a platter does 12 lessons a week they can make as much as $2400/wk by teaching

exactly like golf imo

Excellent video

Tennis just needs more marketing to get players better pay. The pay is reasonable.

I propose 5 set matches between the top 4 ranked players , 8 times a year . You can wrap it up over a weekend . Money split between the players broadcasters and atp common fund .

Mmmm interesting. However, nothing is ever simple... What about players who have made it to the top 100/top10, made good money but don't want to leave and just keep playing and hang around the 100-20 mark. Do they get a guaranteed income, instead of retiring and letting new players in? Also should these players get Wild Cards to ATP events or should it be for younger players?!? The weirdest wild card this year was Attila Balazs, age 35. He played two atp games in a main draw and lost 6-1, 6-1, 6-0 in R1 to Medvedev at US Open, and 6-1, 6-0, 6-3 to RBA in R1 at Wimbledon. Wow, I wouldn't be happy paying money to see those games! So any system would need caveats, conditions, allocations or eligibility requirements. Otherwise lots of unintended consequence. Some players would just keep playing because that's all they have ever done. Maybe some of the lower ranked players also need to get some other qualifications at the same time rather than just hitting a tennis ball. That may seem a little harsh. But there's no guarantee the current 135 ranked player in a harder competition wouldn't be more like 300+. So trying to fix that player's issue just made it worse for him. Potentially something other than tennis is what he should now be doing at age 26....

I like tennis in terms of watching it, but definitely, there re much more expenses for most tennis players, than players in other sports.

Actually the winner of a 15k gets 2 thousand dollars. 15k is shared among all the players but the winner gets the most

Professional tennis players are business owners. Group sport players are employees. Employees get stable income.

Why do you only recieve 15% of the prize money when you win a futures or challenger?

It's not a distribution problem. As mentioned, hardly anyone watches ITF or challenger tournaments. They simply need to reinvent the game. That's hard because you know who is against that ? Fans who are complaining about this in the first place.

just 15k ? like...how make in a year ?

Many players you see come from rich families, many of the players who used to beat them can no longer afford to play

A society that allows one man to gain so much wealth for himself is just plain crazy. Imagine if the prize money was spread as if all men and women néeded caring for. In actual fact humans not only are indifferent for other humans but what sets them apart is that they actually go out of their way to harm others.

Possible solutions: 1. The 7 stakeholders to band together into a SINGLE body, to negotiate with the media companies with a single voice, and extract fair value for the players. This increases the size of the pie to begin with. 2. Tournament OWNERS to not take the majority share of revenues (currently about 93% on average). The players should get at a minimum, 50% of the revenues generated, not 7% on average as it stands currently. Whether it is the PTPA who represents the players interests, or another body, they should strike until they get what is fairly owed to them. 3. Thiem is wrong with his vies. Why? Because if a player doesn't work hard enough, they will get sub-par results anyway. Tennis is a meritocracy after all. 4. Someone like Ion Tiriac should partner with a wealthy nation like Norway (Norway has a huge sovereign wealth fund) to essentially DRAG tennis kicking and screaming into the modern age, like what has happened with LIV golf, and before it with cricket and rugby league.

I am sure that talented people don't make it, but there are more important things to contribute to than helping talented players make more in tennis. I still respect Novak.

If the demand and viewership for professional tennis below the ATP level tournaments organically increases to a significant degree, then I think we might see that reflected in an increase in the prize money as a well as an improvement in the player support mechanisms. However, I don't think the current demand, viewership, and marketing strategy at ATP Challenger and ITF Futures events merit upgrades in earning potential or additional support for lower ranked players. Being the individual sport that tennis is, it appears that most of the interest is concentrated around a finite number of compelling rivalries between players that have at one point or another breached the Top 16. Just take a look at the Top 100. How many players that haven't reached the Top 16 or who you don't think realistically ever have a shot of reaching the Top 16 would you be willing to set aside time to watch at your leisure, without additional external motivators (personal familiarity/stakes, national representation, specific play style preferences, etc.)?

My question here is: Where was Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal (the supposedly called "angels" of the tennis world) when things like these happen. Djokovic (the "bad" guy of the tennis world) was the one out of these three that actually made something happen.

The problem with Tennis and the players is that there is NO union per say. Tennis is a vagabond life. Thus, the tournaments need to provide hotel space and meals. They need to provide lodging and free flights for the top 10/20/30 players to the tournaments. If they dont than they make it difficult for all parties concerned.

i think prfessional players should consider what golfers did - break-away league

Liam broadys world 93

What was the weird Alex example?

Sounds like Novak is the man, that why the officials and board members dislike him so much. He has a voice and stands up for what he believes in and actually tries to help other players.