{"id":367335,"date":"2026-01-13T11:13:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/367335\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T11:13:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T11:13:26","slug":"alcaraz-wouldnt-have-got-half-of-us-open-money-as-reality-laid-bare-tennis-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/367335\/","title":{"rendered":"Alcaraz ‘wouldn’t have got half of US Open money’ as reality laid bare | Tennis | Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

A tennis<\/a> star has claimed Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> \u201cdidn\u2019t even get half\u201d of his US Open winnings last year. Alcaraz overcame rival Jannik Sinner<\/a> for the fourth time in five meetings to lift the US Open trophy<\/a> for the second time in his career last September. In doing so, the 22-year-old secured the biggest purse handed out in the history of tennis<\/a> in the form of a \u00a33.7million ($5m) payday.<\/p>\n

The same sum was awarded to Aryna Sabalenka <\/a>for her victory in the women\u2019s singles at Flushing Meadows. Yet, despite that eye-watering figure being widely reported, world No.20 women\u2019s tennis player Karolina Muchova says the Spaniard wouldn\u2019t have even received half of that prize money in real terms. She told Forbes<\/a>: \u201cIn New York, where Carlos Alcaraz<\/a> won that amount this year, he won’t even get half of it. You pay taxes in America and at home, so no one will actually see the amount we’re talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Muchova was also asked whether she agreed that players should receive a larger share of the profits at Grand Slam tournaments, given the BBC<\/a>\u2019s report that they only got between 12.5% and 20% of total tournament revenue last year.<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cI agree. Tournaments are getting longer, with almost all Grand Slam tournaments now starting on Sunday, which means an extra day of revenue for them. Compared to other sports, our share is very small. People read that the winner of the US Open won $5m, but that’s just one person out of 200, if you include the qualifiers.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was revealed at the time of Alcaraz\u2019s triumph that a hefty chunk of the world No. 1\u2019s winnings would go straight to the US authorities. That’s because athletes are subject to tax laws in the local jurisdictions where they earn their keep.<\/p>\n

Alcaraz fell into the highest bracket of federal income tax in the United States. Due to his earnings being above the upper threshold of $609,351, he was subject to a federal income tax rate of 37%.<\/p>\n

That amounted to \u00a31.37m in tax before he even left the country, leaving him with \u00a32.33m in earnings. The damage was worsened if he was expected to pay state tax in New York, which has one of the highest personal tax rates in the US.<\/p>\n

The state income tax for earnings between $1.08m and $5m in New York is 9.65%. The tiered system means this rate would only apply to earnings in that range, leaving Alcaraz with closer to \u00a32m as his take-home figure.<\/p>\n

All of that would be before factoring in the usual expenses such as paying his manager, coaches, accommodation and travel. Despite Muchova’s claim about being “taxed at home” too, a double taxation treaty between Spain and the United States prevented the tennis sensation from being penalised again in his home country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tennis star has claimed Carlos Alcaraz \u201cdidn\u2019t even get half\u201d of his US Open winnings last year.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[12701,870,25071,811,46066,80881,101,118,56,54,55,7259],"class_list":["post-367335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-atp-tour","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-flushing-meadows","tag-jannik-sinner","tag-karolina-muchova","tag-prize-money","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-open-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367335","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=367335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}