Top tennis players plan to protest prize money at the French Open by limiting media appearances. Selected players at the opening press conference will leave after 15 minutes. The rest of the draw will refuse extra interviews with the tournament’s main media rights partners. Players cite that grand slams allocate about 15% of revenues to prize money and say the French Open prize pot is 61.7m. They believe they will not be fined if they meet contractual obligations to do brief flash interviews after matches. The protest follows a long dispute over revenue shares, welfare and pension provisions, and influence over tournament schedules. Some players raised boycott ideas at the Italian Open, while others distanced themselves.
"Players selected to take part in Friday's opening press conference at Roland Garros will walk out after 15 minutes, symbolising that the slams allocate an average of 15% of their revenues to prize money. The rest of the draw will refuse to conduct additional interviews with the tournament's main media rights partners, TNT Sports and Eurosport. A source close to the players said that after the French Open confirmed this month this year's prize pot will be 61.7m (52.6m), locker room talks have led them to respond with what they described as a work to rule strategy in Paris, with their off-court activities to be kept to a bare minimum."
"The players are understood to have studied the tournament rulebook and concluded they will not be fined as long as they fulfil their contractual obligations to conduct a short flash interview with rights holders after each match. The leading 20 male and female players, including Novak Djokovic, Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff, have been in dispute with all four grand slams for more than a year. They feel they are given an insufficient share of each tournament's increasing revenues, while they have also demanded enhanced welfare and pension provisions and a greater say in determining tournament schedules."
"After the French Open's prize money announcement, Sabalenka and Gauff raised the prospect of players boycotting the grand slams during interviews conducted at the Italian Open in Rome, although Iga Swiatek and Emma Raducanu distanced themselves from talk of a strike. The French Open prize fund has risen by 9.5% this year, with the men's and women's winners to receive 2.8m, but the players are unhappy the increase is far more modest as a percentage of tournament revenues. While Roland Garros's income increased by 14% to 395m last year, prize money ros"
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]