Saying thank you very much for a 20% annual increase before escalating the protest to another level shows the confidence the players, and their representatives, are feeling.<\/p>\n
The average UK employee can currently expect a 3.4% annual pay rise, and with first-round losers at Wimbledon guaranteed to take home \u00a380,000, sympathy among the general public is likely to be in short supply.<\/p>\n
But for the players this is not about the annual increase, but about getting a higher percentage of the revenue they help the All England Club generate.<\/p>\n
The AELTC counters with the argument that revenue does not take into account their costs, or investment in infrastructure and other grass-court events.<\/p>\n
But the players feel emboldened, and will not mourn over lost media opportunities, especially if they can avoid being fined.<\/p>\n
The French Open prize money increase was in single digits, but players received 16% at the Australian Open and expect this year’s US Open to at least match the 20% rise they offered last year.<\/p>\n
They are slowly but surely getting what they want on pay, although are asking for an extra 1.5% of revenue every year until 2030.<\/p>\n
Those figures may not be delivered across the board, so can the issue be solved by negotiation, or will it revert to a game of bluff in which players threaten strike action – and more convincingly than they have to date?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saying thank you very much for a 20% annual increase before escalating the protest to another level shows…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-726335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}