{"id":159878,"date":"2025-09-25T16:48:24","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T16:48:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/159878\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T16:48:24","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T16:48:24","slug":"im-a-tennis-pro-i-make-less-money-in-a-year-than-carlos-alcaraz-does-in-24-hours-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/159878\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I’m a tennis pro – I make less money in a year than Carlos Alcaraz does in 24 hours’ | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tennis player ranked outside the world’s top 200 has opened up on the harsh realities of competing at lower-profile events. Fans are accustomed to the likes of Novak Djokovic<\/a>, Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> and Jannik Sinner<\/a> raking in millions of pounds each year. However, for every player living a life of luxury, there are many others struggling to make ends meet.<\/p>\n

Stefano Travaglia turned professional in 2008 and has been a staple on the ATP Tour for nearly two decades. He reached a career-high ranking of 60th in 2021 but has since fallen way down the pecking order. The man from Italy now makes a living by playing in Challenger events, but has been struggling to earn a comfortable amount of money.<\/p>\n

Travaglia earned just over \u00a326,000 last year, which is less than \u00a33,000 above the current National Living Wage in the UK. He earns nowhere near as much as players like Alcaraz, who makes just shy of \u00a336million each year according to Forbes.<\/p>\n

That works out at around \u00a398,000 per day, meaning the Spaniard makes nearly four times as much as Travaglia’s annual pay in only 24 hours.<\/p>\n

Opening up on the financial struggles that come with playing at lower levels, Travaglia told Gazzetta dello Sport<\/a>: “At my age, I would need a physio every day, but I can’t. It’s an investment I can’t afford. We try to stay in double rooms to save money.<\/p>\n

“As for the Challenger circuit, the level is very high, starting from the qualifications. Young players produce modern tennis and aren’t afraid of anything, so you have to be very prepared physically.<\/p>\n

“You play a lot non-stop to accumulate results, but you struggle to climb the rankings. Someone might ask me: ‘But who pushes you to do it?’.<\/p>\n

“The answer is simple: the passion for this sport and the support of people who believe in me and encourage me every day.”<\/p>\n

Tavaglia is far from the only tennis player struggling with the bleak realities of not being among the sport’s elite. Earlier this year, Tallon Griekspoor offered a candid insight into just how expensive it is to compete on the tour.<\/p>\n

“Well, first of all, tennis is super expensive,” said the Dutchman<\/a>. “That\u2019s the thing, you need to pay for your hotel, your travel. If you\u2019re a soccer team, everything gets paid for, you get the money every month in the bank.<\/p>\n

“In tennis, you need to perform to earn money. I think still a lot of guys who are around No. 250, they go to Grand Slam qualifiers, they don\u2019t have a coach.<\/p>\n

“They do it by themselves because it\u2019s too expensive and they\u2019re fighting to pay for their coach, pay for their physio. We\u2019re not talking here about Sinner and Alcaraz, those are guys you cannot compare yourself with them.<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s what I always tell the young guys as well. Those guys are like diamonds, they\u2019re one out of a million, they have huge contracts. All the money I earned, I was basically investing straight away.”<\/p>\n

To be the first to receive the latest tennis news, join our WhatsApp community<\/a> or newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tennis player ranked outside the world’s top 200 has opened up on the harsh realities of competing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[72762,12701,870,72761,72763,101,118,12700,72760,872,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-159878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-atp-challenger","tag-atp-tour","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-carlos-alcaraz-earnings","tag-carlos-alcaraz-net-worth","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-section","tag-tennis-latest-stefano-travaglia","tag-tennis-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}