Aryna Sabalenka believes that the top tennis players will boycott grand slam tournaments in an attempt to resolve their dispute with the four events, which they argue should provide players with a greater share of their growing revenues.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think at some point we will boycott it, yeah,\u201d said Sabalenka during her pre-tournament press conference at the Italian Open. \u201cI feel like that\u2019s going to be the only way to fight for our rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sabalenka\u2019s comments come after a group of the top 20 male and female players jointly released a statement<\/a> criticising the prize money levels offered at the French Open, which begins this month. Sabalenka argued that the players should be more fairly compensated for their influence on tournament finances.<\/p>\n \u201cDefinitely when you see the number and you see the amount the players [are] receiving \u2026 I feel like the show is on us,\u201d Sabalenka said. \u201cI feel like without us there wouldn\u2019t be a tournament and there wouldn\u2019t be that entertainment. I feel like definitely we deserve to be paid more percentage. What can I say? I just really hope that all of the negotiation that we are having, we at some point are going to get to the right decision, to the conclusion that everyone will be happy with.\u201d<\/p>\n Coco Gauff, the world No 4, said she also believes it could take a boycott for the players to achieve their aims: \u201cI kind of agree with that [Sabalenka\u2019s comments], just taking what the WNBA kind of accomplished,\u201d she said. \u201cThey also have a union, so I think that helps.<\/p>\n \u201cI definitely think, not from my experience, because I don\u2019t have a lot of life experiences, but from the things I\u2019ve seen with other sports, usually to make massive progress and things like this, it takes a union. We have to become unionised in some way. I think you can put pressure on media, media pressure and things like that. For all of us showing up, everyone\u2019s going to act as normal. I definitely agree with her on that standpoint. I think a few other players agree, too.\u201d<\/p>\n The player group has published a series of signed private letters and public statements aimed at the four grand-slam tournaments \u2013 the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open \u2013 over the past year arguing that players receive an unfairly low share of revenue. They have also called for contributions to player welfare funds, such as player pension initiatives promoted by the men\u2019s Association of Tennis<\/a> Professionals and the Women\u2019s Tennis Association.<\/p>\n Iga Swiatek, the former world No 1, offered her own measured criticisms of the four majors on Tuesday. \u201cI think we\u2019ve been pretty reasonable in terms of our proposal and getting the fair share of revenue,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Iga Swiatek during a practice session in Rome. Photograph: Robert Prange\/Getty Images<\/p>\n \u201cThe most important thing honestly is to have proper communication and discussions with the governing bodies so we have some space to talk and maybe negotiate. Hopefully before Roland Garros there\u2019s going to be opportunity to have these type of meetings and we\u2019ll see how they go.\u201d<\/p>\n Swiatek said she is unsure whether the player group would be willing to boycott tournaments but she insisted that various off-court issues in recent years have united the top female players: \u201cI think we have pretty clear and [hold a] similar vision. But boycotting the tournament, it\u2019s a bit extreme kind of situation. I don\u2019t know. I guess we as players are here to play as individuals, and we\u2019re competing against each other. There have been situations like that, so it\u2019s really hard for me to say how it would work, if it\u2019s even there in the picture. For now, I haven\u2019t heard anything.\u201d<\/p>\n Sabalenka, however, believes that players would be on the same page: \u201cLet\u2019s see how far we can get. If it\u2019s going to take players for boycott. I feel like nowadays, we girls can easily get together and go for this because some of the things I feel like it\u2019s really unfair to the players. I think at some point it\u2019s going to get to this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aryna Sabalenka believes that the top tennis players will boycott grand slam tournaments in an attempt to resolve…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-651447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}