{"id":654958,"date":"2026-05-07T06:37:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T06:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/654958\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T06:37:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T06:37:20","slug":"world-number-one-aryna-sabalenka-says-she-is-ready-to-boycott-the-grand-slams-over-prize-money-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/654958\/","title":{"rendered":"World number one Aryna Sabalenka says she is ready to boycott the grand slams over prize money dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"

World number one Aryna Sabalenka said Tuesday she was ready to boycott the Grand Slam tournaments in order to have a greater share of the prize money.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the show is on us. Without us there wouldn\u2019t be a tournament and there wouldn\u2019t be that entertainment,\u201d the four-time Grand Slam winner told a press conference at the Italian Open.<\/p>\n

\ufeffWatch the biggest Aussie sports & the best from overseas LIVE on Kayo Sports | New to Kayo? Join now and get your first month for just $1.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like definitely we deserve to be paid more percentage. \u201cI think at some point we will boycott. I feel like that\u2019s going to be the only way to fight for our rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe 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 Last year almost all the leading players signed two letters to the four Grand Slam bosses demanding an increase in prize money, payments into a player welfare fund to improve retirement and maternity benefits, as well as involvement in decisions that affected them.<\/p>\n

The letters set a target of a 22-percent share in tournament revenue, which would bring the majors in line with the nine combined 1000-level events run by the ATP men\u2019s tour and the women\u2019s WTA tour.<\/p>\n

READ MORE<\/p>\n

\ufeff\u2018Difficult time for me\u2019: Three-peat dream over as world No. 2 withdraws from French Open<\/a><\/p>\n

How painful loss to icon put world No.1 on course for staggering feat even \u2018Big 3\u2019 couldn\u2019t manage\ufeff<\/a><\/p>\n

Aryna Sabalenka celebrates winning a point against Naomi Osaka during their match on Day 8 of the Mutua Madrid Open.Source: Getty Images<\/p>\n

However Poland\u2019s Iga Swiatek, a four-time French Open singles champion, believes boycotting tournaments \u201cis a bit extreme\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the 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,\u201d said Swiatek, who has also won Wimbledon and the US Open.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully before Roland Garros there\u2019s going to be an opportunity to have these type of meetings and we\u2019ll see how they go.\u201d On Monday, players said in a statement that an announcement by the French Open last month of a 9.5-per cent prize money rise was not good enough.<\/p>\n

It said that last year Roland Garros generated 395 million euros ($463 mn), a 14-percent increase.<\/p>\n

However the total purse went up by just 5.4 per cent, reducing player share of revenue to 14.3 per cent.<\/p>\n

It estimated that this year\u2019s revenues would pass 400 million euros, leaving the player cut still below 15 per cent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World number one Aryna Sabalenka said Tuesday she was ready to boycott the Grand Slam tournaments in order…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[5244,1724,64,63,88829,9239,2057,316769,2105,2636,941,2557,316770,316768,28375,668,21396,99083,76106,316765,3595,2020,85,747,316766,750,316767,10911],"class_list":["post-654958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-alexander-zverev","tag-asia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-david-ramos","tag-eastern-asia","tag-europe","tag-events-run","tag-getty-images-inc","tag-iga-swiatek","tag-japan","tag-madrid","tag-maternity-benefits","tag-money-dispute","tag-naomi-osaka","tag-press-conference","tag-prize-money","tag-province-of-madrid","tag-singles-champion","tag-sinner-scorches","tag-southern-europe","tag-spain","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-dispute","tag-tennis-news","tag-tournament-revenue","tag-world-number"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654958","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=654958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}