{"id":658301,"date":"2026-05-08T19:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T19:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/658301\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T19:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T19:07:09","slug":"we-havent-spoken-about-boycotting-alexander-zverev-cools-the-rhetoric-but-sharpens-the-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/658301\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe haven\u2019t spoken about boycotting\u201d: Alexander Zverev cools the rhetoric, but sharpens the numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

A day after Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic each took questions on a possible Grand Slam boycott<\/a>, Alexander Zverev tried to lower the temperature. Speaking after his second-round win over Daniel Altmaier in Rome (7-5, 6-3<\/a>), the German, one of the signatories of the letter sent over a week ago<\/a> by the top 10 men and top 10 women to the four Slams, declined to endorse the boycott framing brought by Aryna Sabalebka and Coco Gauff<\/a> \u2013 and instead steered the conversation to the numbers underneath it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. We haven\u2019t spoken about boycotting,\u201d Zverev said when asked by Tennis Majors whether the threat was a route to getting what the players want. \u201cI think it\u2019s a general thing. If you see the revenue share, you see other sports, it\u2019s very, very close to 50\/50. A lot of other sports, where we are at 15% for both women and men. That\u2019s something that I think is just frustrating to us players.\u201d<\/p>\n

The figure he cited matches the Associated Press\u2019s reporting that the four Slams pay out around 14.3% of revenue to players, against roughly 22% at ATP and WTA 1000 events. Other major team sports in North America operate on revenue-share arrangements close to 50\/50 between leagues and players.<\/p>\n

What was striking was Zverev\u2019s framing of who the argument is actually for. He explicitly placed himself, Sinner and Alcaraz outside the group that needs the change.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the top guys. Jannik makes good money. Carlos makes good money. I make good money. If we get a fair share and we get closer to other sports, many more players can make a living from tennis.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the top guys. Jannik makes good money. Carlos makes good money. I make good money. It\u2019s also, I think right now, probably 150 players can live from tennis on the male side, and probably even less on the women\u2019s side. If we get a fair share and we get closer to other sports, many, many more players can make a living from tennis. That\u2019s the main goal for us \u2014 to push tennis forward, to make it more profitable for many more players, not only the top hundred.\u201d<\/p>\n

The closing line was the bluntest. \u201cI think 15% is just not fair to us players. Last year\u2019s final went for (almost) six hours, myself with Carlos went for five-and-a-half hours (in Melbourne this year). I think those kind of matches are worth more than 15%.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n \"\"
\n <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A day after Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic each took questions on a possible Grand Slam boycott, Alexander…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-658301","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\/658301","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=658301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}