Today is May 1st, first of all to the dedicated to playing tennis and watching tennis workers to say a word, everyone has worked hard!
Tennis never goes out, love never ends. Current tournaments are the ATP250 Portuguese Estoril Open, the ATP250 Munich Open and the co-organised 1000 Madrid Open.
Golfers familiar with the tour calendar know that most tours start on Monday and end on Sunday, which lasts exactly one week. The reason for this arrangement is to keep the schedule in line with the pace of the standings – the finals are played on Sunday, and the ATP and WTA announce a new edition of the standings on Monday.
According to the Tour's calendar, at-points, rankings and bonuses for players were released on April 25, which can also be seen as a summary of the first four months of the year.
Usually, we are familiar with the points and rankings of the latest issue, but we know very little about the player's bonus income. Yesterday, I went to the official websites of the ATP and WTA to check the bonuses of male and female players in the first four months of this year, selected the top 25 players in the prize income ranking, and plotted their bonus income into two bar charts, so that it looks clear at a glance.
Below is a bar chart of the top 25 male players in the prize money. With 15 men in prize money of more than $1 million, Nadal topped the list with $3.12 million, with the 2-5 players in the rankings being Alcaraz, Tsitsipas, Fritz and Medvedev.
Below is a bar chart of the top 25 female players in the prize money. With four men in prize money of more than $1 million, Swatak topped the list with $3.658 million, with the 2-5 players in the rankings being Barty, Collins, Sakkari and Bardoza.
After comparing and analyzing the men's and women's bonus lists, I came to the following three conclusions.
First, the women with the highest prize money have surpassed all the male players. We were surprised to find that Svatek's prize money not only surpassed this year's Australian Open champion Barty, but even surpassed Nadal, the highest paid man in the prize money. Swataker's high prize money has a lot to do with her brilliant record this year, with a 32-3 record this year, winning back-to-back WTA 1000 in Doha, Indian Wells and Miami, and winning the WTA 500 in Stuttgart last week.
Therefore, Svatek's income exceeding Nadal's does not represent the difference in income between male and female players, and the direct reason for this phenomenon is that Swatak's achievements this year are too prominent.
Second, the income of male players is significantly higher than that of female players. In addition to the fact that Svatek's bonuses exceeded Nadal's, the second obvious feature reflected in the comparison of men's and women's bonuses is that from the top 25 players in earning, the bonus income of male players is significantly higher than that of female players.
The total prize money of the top 25 male players is $32.28 million, while the total prize money of the top 25 female players is $21.41 million. Considering that the Tour has largely achieved equal pay for men and women for equal work, the above differences illustrate that male players are more concentrated in income than female players.
The chart below is a histogram of the top 25 players in the bonus income, with only 6 female players represented by purple and 19 male players represented by blue.
This shows that the income gap between the bonuses in the men's tennis world is even greater, and the Matthew effect that reflects the gap between the rich and the poor is more obvious than that in the women's tennis world.
Third, doubles are really profitable. Many people only care about singles and ignore doubles, mainly because the ratings and attention of singles are much higher than in doubles, and the gap between singles and doubles bonuses is also very obvious. For example, this year's Australian Open men's and women's singles champions have prize money of $2.875 million, while doubles champions have only $337,500 per person, which is 8.5 times the latter.
In general, top players rarely sign up for doubles matches. Players with low singles rankings and good doubles results tend to report singles and doubles in the event, and such players are difficult to score deeper rounds in the singles draw table, so it is better to report a doubles at the same time, at least to earn more money.
After comparing the above two lists, I found that sometimes doubles matches can also earn a lot of money. For example, Isner's doubles bonus this year is $462,785, or 58.2 percent of his total singles and doubles bonuses, which have surpassed singles bonuses. Kyrgios's doubles prize this year is $322,465, which also accounts for 43.6% of his total prize money.
In the above list, only Isner's doubles bonus exceeded the singles bonus for the male players, while two doubles bonuses exceeded the singles bonus for the female players, Snyakova and Woznareva, respectively, both of whom had doubles bonuses of more than $270,000.
What is the concept of $270,000? We take the ongoing ATP250 Portuguese Estoril Open and ATP250 Munich Open, Germany, where the singles winner prize money is about $88,000. In this comparison, you will feel that if you focus on doubles, you will not make as little money as you think, right? (Source: Tennis House Author: Yun Cirrus Yunshu)