A sports finance expert believes Wimbledon\u2019s decision to increase prize money by 20% is a \u201csmart\u201d move but won\u2019t settle the ongoing revenue share debate.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, it was revealed that Wimbledon<\/a> would increase its total prize money pot to \u00a364.2m, up from \u00a353.5m from 2025.<\/p>\n The All England Club announced that this year\u2019s men\u2019s and women\u2019s singles champions will earn \u00a33.6m each, up from \u00a33m, and the first-round losers will now receive \u00a380,000 \u2013 \u00a314,000 more than in 2025.<\/p>\n However, the players reportedly wanted a pot of around \u00a370m and a tournament revenue share of 16%. Wimbledon, though, have ostensibly capped that at 15.15%.<\/p>\n Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> was open to the idea of a Grand Slam boycott after French Open figureheads dropped the tournament\u2019s revenue share to under 15%, with Jannik Sinner<\/a> also saying players don\u2019t get the respect they deserved.<\/p>\n Victoria Mboko posts short reply after Serena Williams sends message to injured Queen\u2019s star<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Serena Williams\u2019 Wimbledon return looks imminent after tournament\u2019s blunder<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Want more from Tennis365? Add us as\u00a0<\/span>a preferred source on Google to your favourites list<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>for tennis coverage you can trust.<\/strong><\/p>\n Prior to the French Open<\/a>, Professor Rob Wilson told\u00a0Tennis365<\/strong> that top players needed to put on a united front to push through their demands.<\/span><\/p>\n He correctly predicted that there would be an uptick in prize money at SW19 and now he has delivered a fresh take on this thorny topic.<\/p>\n He said, \u201cI think it\u2019s a smart move from Wimbledon in the short term. A 20% increase is hard to dismiss, especially with first-round losers going from \u00a366,000 to \u00a380,000. That\u2019s meaningful for a lot of players, not just the top names.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more interesting bit is the revenue share. If they\u2019re effectively at just over 15%, that\u2019s progress, but it\u2019s still some way off what the players are ultimately pushing for at 22% (which is what the Masters events on the ATP and WTA Tours provide).<\/p>\n \u201cSo I can see why this might take some heat out of the situation for now, but I don\u2019t think it settles the broader debate.\u00a0My guess is it probably reduces the likelihood of any immediate protests or coordinated action during Wimbledon itself, because the optics of rejecting a 20% rise would be tricky.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if revenues keep growing and players feel they\u2019re not getting a proportional share, I suspect the pressure comes back pretty quickly. So overall, smart politically from Wimbledon, buys them some breathing room, but I\u2019d be surprised if this is the end of the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n Professor Kieran Maguire, who runs The Price of Football podcast, stated that Wimbledon will still be in a strong financial situation despite significantly increasing the prize money on offer.<\/p>\n He told Tennis365<\/strong>, \u201cThe AELTC (LTD), which funds Wimbledon, generated revenue of \u00a3423m in 2025. That compares to any Premier League football club and is just behind the \u2018Big Six\u2019 (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City, Tottenham).<\/p>\n \u201cUnlike football, it generated a handsome profit of \u00a354m, which was mainly then distributed to the good causes of the grassroots of the LTA itself.<\/p>\n \u201cThe LTA does have a lot of capacity to increase the amount of pay-outs to players because the accounts do look very comfortable. There was cash of over \u00a347m in the bank account.<\/p>\n \u201cThese accounts would be the envy of many other governing bodies in sports. Whilst it is a substantial increase in the potential pay-out to players, in order to keep in line with the other Grand Slams it won\u2019t be a problem.<\/p>\n \u201cIt continues to be an event which is incredibly popular with broadcasters, sponsors and the paying public and those three revenue sources will be more than enough to pay the players the increased costs of participation in terms of prize money.\u201d<\/p>\n The AELTC paid the Lawn Tennis Association \u00a348.1m last year. This is part of an agreement where they pass on 90% of its profits to the governing body.<\/p>\n Despite calls for higher percentages when it comes to revenue shares, the chair of the All England Club, Deborah Jevans, said that wasn\u2019t a helpful metric.<\/p>\n She told BBC Sport<\/a>, \u201cWe don\u2019t look at percentages, we don\u2019t actually believe that is the right metric. It is one metric that is based purely on revenue and doesn\u2019t take into account any costs and we cannot run a business in that way.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have expenses \u2013 we have spoken about infrastructure and investment in grass court tennis. You cannot run a sustainable business, and we have nearly been around for 150 years, just by looking at revenue. That is just plainly wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n Discussions are likely to continue ahead of the US Open<\/a> announcing its prize money pot later this summer.<\/p>\n WHAT NEXT? Mirra Andreeva replaces Aryna Sabalenka as No 1 as Maja Chwalinska up to 13th \u2013 WTA prize money leaders<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Wimbledon\u2019s \u00a364.2m prize money boost won\u2019t silence players, warn finance experts<\/a> appeared first on Tennis365<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A sports finance expert believes Wimbledon\u2019s decision to increase prize money by 20% is a \u201csmart\u201d move but won\u2019t settle the ongoing revenue share debate. On Thursday, it was revealed that Wimbledon would increase its total prize money pot to \u00a364.2m, up from \u00a353.5m from 2025. The All England Club announced that this year\u2019s men\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tennisring.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}More Wimbledon News<\/strong><\/h2>\n