LONDON \u2014 Amid players’ calls for\u00a0a bigger share of revenues, Wimbledon on Thursday announced 20 per cent increases in total prize money and for the singles champions, who will earn 3.6 million pounds ($4.8 million) at the grass-court Grand Slam next month.<\/p>\n
The total prize money including player per diems will be 64.2 million pounds ($85.8 million), described as \u201cby far\u201d the biggest annual increase in the tournament’s history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would hope the players would welcome it. It\u2019s a significant amount of money,\u201d All England Club chair Deborah Jevans said at a press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve demonstrated that we\u2019ve looked at every round, including qualifying. My hope is that the players do recognize what a significant increase that this is.”<\/p>\n
Players have long been calling for a greater share of revenues from the four Grand Slams and recently began taking steps toward collective action.<\/p>\n
For this year\u2019s Wimbledon, players advocated for total prize money of 71 million pounds ($95 million), Jevans said, citing her recent talks in Paris with Larry Scott, the former WTA CEO who has been advising the players.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the French Open, No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka said players should at some point organize a boycott if their demands aren\u2019t met. Men’s No. 1 Jannik Sinner, Coco Gauff and others also spoke out.<\/p>\n
Then, in pre-tournament news conferences at Roland Garros, top-10 players\u00a0limited their sessions with journalists\u00a0to 15 minutes in symbolic protest of their share of the tournament revenues.<\/p>\n
Just over a year ago, 20 leading players\u00a0signed a letter\u00a0to the heads of the four Grand Slams seeking more prize money and a greater voice in decision making.<\/p>\n
Wimbledon, the oldest Grand Slam tournament, begins June 29. Iga Swiatek is the\u00a0women’s defending champion. Sinner beat Carlos Alcaraz in\u00a0last year’s men’s final\u00a0and the Spaniard will miss the event because of a\u00a0wrist injury.<\/p>\n
First-round prize money this year will be 80,000 pounds ($107,000), which is a 21 per cent increase over 2024, and the qualifying rounds will see a total increase of 25 per cent.<\/p>\n
The runner-up in the men’s and women’s singles will get 1.8 million pounds ($2.4 million) each. That’s an 18 per cent increase over last year.<\/p>\n
Wimbledon profits also support grassroots tennis<\/p>\n
Increasing prize money is a balancing act because 90 per cent of any distributable financial surplus from Wimbledon goes to the Lawn Tennis Association, which is Britain\u2019s governing body for tennis and padel.<\/p>\n
The LTA works to increase participation in the sport, renovate courts, support elite player development, and run grass-court tournaments in the buildup to Wimbledon.<\/p>\n
For calendar year 2025, the LTA\u00a0reported a 4 per cent decrease\u00a0in the Wimbledon surplus (48.6 million pounds or $65 million) compared to 2024, though the LTA\u2019s total revenue was up 2 per cent \u2014 in part, it said, because of the introduction of a women\u2019s tour event at Queen\u2019s Club.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 Amid players’ calls for\u00a0a bigger share of revenues, Wimbledon on Thursday announced 20 per cent increases…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-729729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}