00:00As Oli mentioned, there's been another contest brewing at Wimbledon, this one off the court.
00:05For more than a year, leading players have been pushing for a bigger share of Grand Slam revenues.
00:11And following talks over the weekend, a truce has now been agreed.
00:14Dr. Christina Philippou is Associate Professor in Sport Finance at the University of Portsmouth.
00:20Great to have you on the programme again.
00:21So look, this protest is on pause.
00:24What's changed? Has anything actually been resolved?
00:27It doesn't look like it. It does feel a little bit more of a kind of pause.
00:34Obviously, it was a distraction for players, a reputational damage from a Wimbledon perspective as well.
00:41So it does kind of feel very much that we've put this on pause.
00:45We know that this is an issue. And to be perfectly honest, the demands were more sort of looking long
00:50term anyway.
00:51They weren't about this year. So I think there's more to come on this story.
00:55Is this really about who gets the biggest share of tennis's revenues?
01:04I mean, I think it is. I think the players are basically looking at how, you know, we've seen throughout
01:15the world in multiple sports,
01:18athletes kind of want a bigger share. And to be honest, if you look at other sports, they do get
01:23a bigger share.
01:25A lot of it is about, you know, Wimbledon obviously makes a lot of money and the people are there
01:31to see the athletes.
01:33That's why they're there. And therefore, you know, getting what they currently are at, which is 14.4 percent.
01:39This year's prize money as a percentage of revenue overall, the over the last kind of decade,
01:46it's been 13 to 15 percent, which is very low compared to other sports.
01:52Right. If we look at, you know, baseball or NBA, that's about 50 percent.
01:58If you look at Premier League, they get about 70 percent.
02:01Even if we look at sort of emerging sports like the WNBA, they get 20 percent.
02:05And yet here at Wimbledon, it's, you know, less than 15 percent share.
02:10So there is that argument around, you know, athletes deserve a bigger pot of the money that they are effectively
02:17producing.
02:18So it could change the way that Grand Slams do business.
02:21But let's talk about Serena Williams, because she's back thanks to a wild card.
02:25How much do star names influence the commercial decisions that tournaments make?
02:31Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, star names are the big draw.
02:37You can get better sponsors. You can get, you know, there's more kind of broadcasting pool.
02:45I know the broadcasters are set, you know, way beforehand, but particularly kind of pool around social media
02:51and how you can monetize that from a commercial perspective also draws the crowds.
02:56Again, we know Wimbledon is normally way oversubscribed because they keep their prices low.
03:02But it's that sort of commercial draw that changes the decisions and having the big names there kind of pool
03:10things.
03:10I mean, we need to remember, right, Grand Slams have been set in stone for almost a century now.
03:17But things change and we see that changing in other sports. Right.
03:21So it's very, very important to ensure that that draw remains there.
03:26Dr. Cristina Filippo, from the University of Portsmouth, great speaking to you again. Thank you.
Comments