Equal Prize Money in Tennis Took 34 Years and a Deodorant Company

The dates, and the gaps between them

1973: the US Open, first, with $25,000 to each draw.

2001: the Australian Open, 28 years later.

2006: Roland-Garros equalises the champions’ prizes; 2007, every round.

February 2007: Wimbledon, last.

Thirty-four years separates the first from the last, in a sport with four events at the same level, governed by four different organisations, with no mechanism to compel any of them.

1973 happened because it was paid for

The US Open’s decision is usually told as a straightforward victory for Billie Jean King and the new WTA, and it was. But the practical detail matters: the equalisation was made affordable by a cash supplement from a sponsor — Ban Deodorant.

That is worth noting without cynicism. The tournament did not have to choose between equality and its budget, because someone else covered the difference.

It is a recurring pattern in sports equity. The obstacle is rarely a principled objection; it is that somebody has to fund the change, and progress arrives when a party is found who will. Compare World Athletics paying Olympic gold medallists from its own IOC allocation — another case where the question was not whether to pay, but out of whose budget.

The argument that was made, and the one that was not

The public case against equal prize money was almost always about sets: men play best of five, women best of three, so men do more work and should be paid more.

It is an argument about input, and it does not survive contact with how the tournaments are actually sold. Prize money at a Grand Slam does not come from a per-set calculation. It comes from a pooled revenue — broadcast rights, tickets, sponsorship — generated by the event as a whole, in which the women’s and men’s draws are sold together, scheduled together, and watched by the same audience across the same fortnight.

Nobody buys a ticket for a quarter of a men’s match. They buy a day at the tournament.

The argument that was not made publicly, but that plainly operated, was simpler: the money was already allocated, and equalising meant redistributing it. Redistribution has losers, and the losers had representation.

The last holdout was the most exposed

Wimbledon’s position became untenable well before 2007, and the reason is instructive.

Once the US Open, the Australian Open and eventually Roland-Garros had moved, the remaining tournament was no longer defending a norm. It was defending an exception — and an exception has to justify itself in a way a norm never does.

The Championships’ announcement in February 2007 followed sustained pressure, including Venus Williams making the case directly to the Grand Slam committee.

That is the mechanism by which most of these changes actually complete: not persuasion of the last holdout on the merits, but the isolation of the last holdout by the others moving first.

What equal prize money did not fix

Equal Grand Slam prize money is a genuine achievement and a narrow one.

The majors are four tournaments a year. Across the rest of the calendar, ATP and WTA events pay differently, and the difference is substantial. Endorsement income — which is where most top players earn most of their money — is not governed by any tournament’s prize structure at all.

So a sport frequently cited as the model for gender pay equality has equalised the most visible component of income at four events, and left the rest to the market.

That is not a criticism of the achievement. It is a reminder of how much of an athlete’s earnings sit outside the prize table entirely — the same fact that makes appearance fees rather than prize money the real economy of athletics.

For the tournaments themselves, see tennis rules and the grand slam final-set tiebreak.