LONDON \u2014 Top tennis players at Wimbledon will extend their protest over prize money by limiting their media appearances at the grass-court Grand Slam tournament.<\/p>\n
The decision means the players only will talk to media for 15 minutes after each match during the first week of the tournament.<\/p>\n
The protest began at this year\u2019s French Open, where players complained that the total prize money only made up 14.3% of the clay-court tournament\u2019s revenue.<\/p>\n
Wimbledon responded by hiking its total prize money by 20% this year \u2014 with the singles champions to get $4.75 million each.<\/p>\n
However, a statement put out by an advisory firm representing the players said the \u201cdirect action protest\u201d will continue during the first week at the All England Club.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlayers will limit their contractual media commitments at the tournament to 15 minutes \u2014 reflecting that Wimbledon currently pays slightly below 15% of revenues to players as prize money \u2014 for the duration of the first week of the Championships,\u201d the statement said. \u201cFollowing detailed consultation with players across both tours, player representatives have written to Wimbledon\u2019s leadership to inform them of the planned action, while acknowledging the welcome recent 20% increase in prize money compared to last year\u2019s Championships.\u201d<\/p>\n
The statement said the the players\u2019 share of Wimbledon\u2019s projected revenues this year is 14.4%, which would be below the 14.9% share they received 10 years ago.<\/p>\n
The players had written a proposal last year asking for 16% of revenues.<\/p>\n
The statement did not specify which players would take part in the protest.<\/p>\n
At the French Open, No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, Coco Gauff and Iga Swiatek were among the top-10 ranked women who limited their media appearances, as did men\u2019s No. 1 Jannik Sinner. However, Novak Djokovic did not take part in the protest.<\/p>\n
In announcing Wimbledon\u2019s 20% increase in prize money, All England Club chair Deborah Jevans said she hoped it would satisfy the players.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve demonstrated that we\u2019ve looked at every round, including qualifying,\u201d Jevans said at the time. \u201cMy hope is that the players do recognize what a significant increase that this is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 Top tennis players at Wimbledon will extend their protest over prize money by limiting their media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":["post-726541","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\/726541","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=726541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}