DOI: 10.5817/FAI2017-1-3 No. 1/2017
40
How Big Is the Prize Money Gap? Analysis of Prize
Money in 2016 Grand Slam Tournaments
Martin Svoboda, Zuzana Rakovská
Masaryk University
Faculty of Economics and Administration, Department of Finance
Lipová 41a, 60200 Brno, Czech Republic
E-mail: Martin.Svoboda@econ.muni.cz, zuzana.rak@gmail.com
Abstract: Since 2007 all Grand Slam tournaments have offered equal prize
money for male and female tennis players. Although men and women are paid
equally in Grand Slams they still play a different number of best-of sets – men
play best-of-five set matches while women play best-of-three set matches.
Those two competing circumstances created a financial gap in prize money
paid to women and men for the unit of effort in a tennis play – for a game.
The present paper estimates this financial gap for 2016 Grand Slam
tournaments. Moreover, it demonstrates the nominal magnitude of this gap
and its effect on year-to-year increasing prize money that are paid to winners.
The results showed that women on average obtained 60% more prize money
for a game played than men in all four 2016 Grand Slams.
Keywords: tennis, sports finance, gender inequality, gender bias, prize
money
JEL codes: G02, Z21, Z23
Introduction
Tennis is a ball game that can be played by both men and women. Tennis is
one of the most popular sports in the world. It is estimated that more than 1
billion people play or watch tennis regularly, mostly in wealthier countries
around the world.
The current form of tennis originated in 1874 when the Englishman Walter
Clopton Wingfield patented tennis rules (ITHF, 2016). The International Tennis
Federation ILTF (International Lawn Tennis Federation) was founded in 1913
and since 1977 has held the name ITF (International Tennis Federation).
Tennis was a part of the modern Olympic Games since their inception until
1924 when it was dropped from the program due to disagreements between
the ILTF and the International Olympic Committee about amateurs’
participation. In 1988 tennis was again included as an Olympic discipline.
Tennis has become fully professionalized and its current direction and further
development is determined by the professional association of men (ATP) and
women (WTA). The ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) and the WTA
(Women’s Tennis Association) are responsible for organizing the global
professional tennis tours. ATP and WTA World Tour calendar comprises also
the Grand Slam tournaments, but the four Grand Slams, namely, US Open,
Australian Open, Wimbledon, and French Open are supervised by the
International Tennis Federation (ITF).
41
These four Grand Slam tournaments are the biggest competitions in the tennis
season and historically, they are also the oldest. Wimbledon (a London
suburb) held its first tennis tournament already in July 1877. Another three
Grand Slam tournaments are held in New York (Flushing Meadows since
1881), Melbourne, Australia (since 1905), and Paris (Roland Garros since
1925).
All four Grand Slams, Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open
offer huge prize money to participating tennis players. Prize money given to
winners in men’s and women’s singles events are the highest out of all other
individual sports. The Grand Slam tournaments earn millions of dollars in
revenue and tennis players are the best paid individuals in the world. They
might obtain millions in prize money as well as through sponsorship deals.
Currently, it is rare in professional sports to offer equal prize money to male
and female players. Tennis Grand Slam tournaments represent the leading
part of those sports that committed to prize money parity and since 2007 all
four Grand Slams have been paying the same money to men and women. The
main contributor for this emancipation of female tennis players belongs to
Women Tennis Association (WTA).
All four Grand Slam tournaments agreed in 1968–69 to allow professional
players to compete with amateurs. This started the so-called Open Era in
tennis. US Open became the first Grand Slam to pay the same prize money to
male and female players in 1973 and it has kept this commitment since then
(ITF, 2016c; US Open, 2016). Australian Open created an equal pay in two
temporary periods. The first was in the years 1985–1986 and the second
period from 1991 to 1995. Since 2001, Australian Open has distributed prize
money equally (ITF, 2016c; AO, 2016). Wimbledon and French Open have
chosen another way. In 1991 French Open started to pay only 5% more prize
money to male players compared to female players and equal prize money
was announced in 2006 (ITF, 2016c; Roland-Garros, 2016). In the case of
Wimbledon, the prize money difference was approximately 10% starting in
1977. Wimbledon, as the last of Grand Slam tournaments, announced prize
money parity in 2007 (ITF, 2016c; Wimbledon, 2016).
The aim of the paper is to deliver a comprehensive analysis of single-tennis
player prize money and payment structures of all four 2016 Grand Slam
tournaments. We will focus on factual data without assessing gender
stereotypes or subjective views.
In the central part of this article, we will build our analysis on the fact that
women play 37.5% fewer sets on average than men in each round of Grand
Slam tournaments. This follows from the structure of a tennis match, which is
different in women’s and men’s play4
. Moreover, we assume the same
4
Typically, a tennis single match is a best-of-three set match. Grand Slam tournaments
are characterized by the fact that men in singles play best-of-five set matches, while
women played only best-of-three set matches. As a result, rounds in women's singles
may end up with two or three sets which gives 2,5 sets on average, whereas rounds in
men's singles might end up with three, four of five sets, giving 4 sets on average.
42
tendency for the number of games played. Since prize money is always
positive and it is equalized within all four Grand Slams in the year of our
study, it follows directly that women are paid 60% more on average than men
for each game played. We note this tendency as the prize money gap.
Under specified conditions, we will calculate and analyze this gap in prize
money paid to men and women for an average game played in a given round
in 2016 Grand Slam tournaments. Moreover, we will estimate future prize
money for all four Grand Slams and using the calculated financial gap we will
study the nominal tendencies of prize money paid to winners for a game
played.
We have formulated the following research question: Did women on average
earn 60% more of prize money than men for a game played in all four 2016
Grand Slam tournaments? Based on the nature of our research question we
chose data only for the one-year period (2016 Grand Slam tournaments).
The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 offers a review of present
literature studying the role of gender in sports. In Section 2 we assess the
history of Grand Slam tournaments while emphasizing their development and
the evolution of prize money for male and female tennis players. The research
question is formulated in Section 3. Section 4 describes data used in the
analysis and proposes a methodology to be employed. The central part of the
present article is formed by Section 5 and Section 6. In Section 5 we examine
the results of our study and in Section 6 we offer a general discussion of the
studied phenomenon of a financial gap. Finally, Section 7 delivers conclusions
of this article.
1 Gender in Sports - Literature Review
This article examines single-player payment structures of four Grand Slam
tournaments: US Open, Australian Open, Wimbledon, and French Open. The
analysis considers men and women separately, and attempts to calculate prize
money per game played in order to compare the financial reward between
these two groups. The aim of the study is to deliver a comprehensive analysis
of factual numbers without assessing gender stereotypes or subjective views.
Nevertheless, the concepts such as gender inequality or gender bias could not
be entirely avoided when discussing the outcomes of the comparison of prize
money for men and women. As a result, we are providing a short review of
literature dealing with gender stereotypes in sports.
In general, there is a big literature gap when considering gender inequality in
sports. Studies that examine this topic are mainly from social, psychological,
or marketing fields. Majority of those articles deal with gender inequality in
proportion of media coverage devoted to men/women (Eastman and Billings,
2000, 2001; Higgs et al., 2003; Billings and Young, 2015). The rest are mainly
theoretical papers discussing the issue in general (Trolan, 2013; Chalabaev et
al., 2013; Fink, 2015). We failed to find and we are not aware of existence of
a single article from the financial or economic field of study which would
discuss this issue. Despite this gap, the existing literature is capable of
providing at least a starting point for the future research. Eastman and Billings
43
(2000) examined sports casting on ESPN and CNN channels and sport
reporting in New York Times and USA Today newspapers. Their aim was to
compare the proportions of time devoted to men and women in sports
broadcasting and to find the pattern of gender stereotyping in media news.
The paper represents a pilot study for examining gender inequality in everyday
sports broadcasting. The authors analyzed a 5-month period so as to find
where the peaks of favoritism towards men and women are (US Open,
Wimbledon and French Open were part of this period). Authors measured the
time devoted to men and women, and recorded the adjectival descriptors
applied to men and women by CNN or ESPN hosts, so to examine how genders
are described in media through neutrality/factuality of adjectives used. Strong
and consistent preference for men in both printed and electronic media was
found. Coverage for women was proved to be approximately 5% in all four
types of media.
A similar analysis was conducted in Billings & Young (2015). Authors studied
more than one hundred hours of sports casting on two channels: ESPN and
FOX Sports (the study follows research of Coche (2013)) in order to estimate
the difference between the proportions of women/men sports. Regardless of
media, women's sports were shown approximately 1% of the time and, when
shown, women's sports stories were approximately 70% of the length of a
men's story.
The above stated articles studied gender inequality in broadcasting in general.
A few papers also analyzed the situation in specific sports. Eastman & Billings
(2001) examined college basketball matches and found that women basketball
coverage represents only 34% of overall broadcasting. However, authors
suggested that there was no significant difference between the overall
proportion of commentary in men's and women's games in relation to the
proportions of men and women starter athletes. Higgs et al. (2003) measured
clock-time devoted to women in 1996 Olympic Games resulting from the
phenomenal success of American women athletes. In order to demonstrate
whether televised coverage of women sports increased, they compared the
measurements to 1992 Olympic Games. Their findings showed that the
coverage for women increased in some team sports such as basketball or
volleyball and in other sports analyzed remained unchanged. The study thus
suggests the effort on the part of televised media to present women athletes
in a stronger manner.
Trolan (2013) argued that gender inequality in media news could not
disappear unless media re-examine the portrayal of females. The author
suggested that the leading problem was in the way the media present female
athletes, which is - bodies that only exist to be observed. Chalabaev et al.
(2013) discussed gender stereotypes and roles in sport participation and
performance. They argue that gender inequality in sports exists partly because
of social beliefs (people believe in the differences).
Finally, Fink (2015) reviewed and summarized the quantitative and qualitative
differences in media coverage devoted to men and women and discussed the
negative impact of this difference on consumer's perceptions on female
44
athletes. The author argues that women are "infantilized" and framed, and
that there are different production techniques utilized for women and men
sports. Firstly, sport commentators refer to female athletes as girls or young
ladies while male athletes are rarely referred to as boys. Secondly, male
athletes’ success is usually attributed to talent or hard work, whereas female
success is often assumed to be a result of a good luck. Last but not least, the
actual production techniques (on-screen graphics, camera angles, etc.) used
for men and women sports cause that women sports are assumed to be less
important and exciting.
2 Grand Slam Tournaments – Short History
Grand Slam tournaments – Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US
Open, are the most prestigious individual tennis competitions in the world,
which are open to all internationally ranked players. Grand Slams are tightly
connected to so called Open Era in tennis. It started in 1968 when three Grand
Slam tournaments – French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open agreed to allow
professional players to compete with amateurs (Australian Open joined one
year later, in 1969). Before Open Era, only amateur players participated in
Grand Slams. The Open Era - period from May 1968 to present day, is a very
important milestone in tennis history. Since its beginning, tennis as a sport,
has developed rapidly from the professional players' point of view and
importantly, all tennis players participating in tournaments in the Open Era
started to be paid based on their performance in the tournaments and not
based on their proficiency. Historical statistics about ranking in tournaments or
prize money are usually held only within the Open Era, and tennis titles
obtained before the Open Era are less valued than those obtained during it.
The term “Grand Slam” originally represents an event of winning all four
tournaments within a single season in one calendar year. There are only three
tennis players (one man and two women) who achieved Grand Slam in single
draws during the Open Era: Rod Laver (1988), Margaret Court (1970), and
Steffi Graf (1988) (ITF, 2015a, b).
Grand Slams, among all tennis professional championships, constitute the
highest media attention, prize money and the highest amount of ranking
points entering ranking systems5
. Moreover, Grand Slams are the only
championships which are organized for both, men and women (other
competitions are conducted either entirely for female or male players). This
fact yields an opportunity to compare how men and women are treated in
professional tennis competitions and what is the most important, it allows us
to conduct an analysis in which we will compare the actual prize money earnt
by male and female players.
5
There are two ranking systems, one for men conducted by the Association of Tennis
Professionals (ATP), and one for women, conducted by the Women’s Tennis Association
(WTA). The systems are (ITF 2015a, b) Emirates ATP Ranking, and WTA Ranking
System, respectively. Number of points players obtain from Grand Slams is twice as high
as the most prestigious championships organized by ATP – ATP World Tour Masters
1000, or by WTA – Premier Mandatory Tournaments (ITF, 2015a, b; 2016a).
45
Each individual Grand Slam tournament has its own history which will be
shortly offered in the next part of this section. We will focus mainly on basic
specifics of each Grand Slam and will discuss the history of prize money
development and its differences between genders in more detail.
Australian Open is yearly organized in the last two weeks of January as the
first Grand Slam tournament of the given season. It was first held in 1905 as a
men-only event called “Australasian Championships”. Women started to
compete in this tournament in 1922 and in 1924 it reached the status of
majors and was renamed “Australian Championships”. In 1969, after it joined
Open Era, it was renamed Australian Open. This Grand Slam is permanently
settled in Melbourne as of 1972 and since 1987 it has been played on hard
courts (before this year, it was traditionally played on grass).
Prize money for male and female players awarded in singles draws are
distributed equally as of 2001 when Australian Open created a mandate for
this equal pay. Before this date, there were two temporary periods in which
women were paid the same prize money as men, first in 1985 and 1986, then
1991 to 1995. In 2016 the total prize money in Australian Open for men’s or
women’s singles reached $15 million (ITF, 2016c; AO, 2016).
French Open (Roland Garros) has been organized every year between late
May and early June since 1891. Initially, it was held as a men’s event open
only for French players. In 1897 it opened its doors to women and in 1925 if
finally allowed international players to join the competition. French Open is
permanently staged in Paris in the Roland Garros stadium as of 1928 and is
traditionally played on red clay.
Officially, French Open started to pay equal prize money to men and women in
2006, however starting from 1991 there was only a 5% gap between male and
female prize money. In 2016, the total prize money paid for men’s or women’s
singles player was 24,064 million € (ITF, 2016c; Roland-Garros, 2016).
Wimbledon (The Championships) is the oldest Grand Slam tournament
(and the oldest tennis tournament in the world) which was first played in
1877. The Ladies’ singles were started in 1884. Each year it is held in
Wimbledon, a south-west suburb of London, between late June and early July
and it is the only Grand Slam which has kept playing on the original game’s
surface – grass.
Prize money parity in the case of Wimbledon was announced in 2007, but this
Grand Slam paid approximately 90% of men’s award to female players as
early as in 1977 (ITF, 2016c; Wimbledon, 2016).
US Open, the last Grand Slams tournament of the season, traditionally begins
on the last Monday of August and lasts for two weeks. It was first held in 1881
as the U.S. National Championship, in which only men’s singles were
organized. Women started to compete in this U.S. National Singles
Championship six years later, in 1887. At the turn of the Open Era it was
renamed US Open. It is the only Grand Slam which was played every year
from its inception. In 1978 it was settled in Flushing Meadows which remained
its location till present day. Since 1987, it has been played on the hard court.
46
In 1973, US Open became the first Grand Slam to pay the same prize money
to male and female players and it has kept this commitment since then (ITF,
2016c; US Open, 2016).
3 Research Question
The structure of a tennis match, and hence of all four Grand Slam
tournaments, is deliberately designed with an odd number of sets to ensure a
winner emerges at the end of the match. Typically, tennis competitors play the
best two of three sets to determine a winner. However, in Grand Slam
tournaments this holds only for women's singles while men play best three of
five sets (ITF, 2016b). In other words, rounds in women's singles may end up
with two or three sets which gives 2,5 sets on average, whereas rounds in
men's singles might end up with three, four of five sets, giving 4 sets on
average6
. Women thus play 37.5% fewer sets on average than men in each
round of Grand Slam tournaments.
Moreover, we assume the same tendency for the number of games played.
There are two supporting arguments. Firstly, the set scoring rules are identical
for women's and men's draws in singles of all four Grand Slams. In French
Open, Wimbledon, and Australian Open, the "Tie-break Set" method is applied
to all sets except the final set (fifth in men's draws and third in women's
draws), in which "Advantage Set" method is applied. In US Open, "Tie-break
Set" method is employed in all sets of both men's and women's singles7
. This
argument implies that the number of games played in a non-final and final set
is on average the same in women’s and men’s singles simply because there
are the same scoring rules applied for both genders. Secondly, the number of
games played in each round increases with the number of sets played in each
round as each set consists from at least six games (set score 6-0). Taking
these two arguments into account, we presume that the amount of games
played by women and men is proportional to the number of sets played, and
hence, women play 37.5% fewer games on average than men in each round of
Grand Slam tournaments.
In 2016 we observed the identical payment structure for female and male
players in each of the 2016 Grand Slam tournaments. This means that women
at each level of the prize money structure (from the first level in which 64
losers from the first round were paid equal prize money, to the last level in
which the winner of the seventh round earns the winner prize money) obtained
the same money as men did. Suppose that a male player who was beaten in
6
We are assuming that all two (in women’s singles) or three (in men’s singles) possible
amounts of sets played in a round occur with equal probabilities.
7
There are two main methods of scoring in the tennis sets: the “Advantage Set” and the
“Tie-break Set”. In “Advantage Set”, the first player to win six games wins that “Set”,
provided there is a margin of two games over the opponent. If necessary, the set shall
continue until this margin is achieved. In the “Tie-break Set”, the first player to win six
games wins that “Set”, provided there is a margin of two games over the opponent. If
the score is tight at six games all (6-6), a tie-break game is played (Grand Slam Board,
2016).
47
the third round obtained EUR Prize Money, then also a woman who
ended in the third round obtained EUR Prize Money.
We concluded in the previous discussion that women play 37.5% fewer games
than men in each of the seven Grand Slam rounds. This implies unequal
average prices of a game played by men and women in each tennis round. In
other words, if men played in a given round, let us say 3rd
round of French
Open, on average a hundred games, then women played on average 62.5
games (37.5% fewer). Now, the average prize money for one game played by
men in this round is /100 EUR, while the average prize money for one
game played by women in the same round is /62,5 EUR. Since prize
money is always positive, it follows directly that women are paid 60% more on
average than men for each game played. We note this tendency as the prize
money gap. Such trend informs our research question:
Research Question: Women will earn 60% more on average than men for a
game played in all four 2016 Grand Slam tournaments.
4 Data and Methodology
Grand Slams are the only professional championships organized for both male
and female tennis players. Each Grand Slam is constituted of men’s singles,
women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles
tournaments. Prize money for the first two and the second two tournaments
are equally distributed in each Grand Slam as of 2007 when Australian Open
as the last championship announced prize money parity for both genders.
Hence, since 2007, women and men have obtained the same amount of
money in all four Grand Slam tournaments.
The goal of this article is to analyze the gap in prize money paid to men and
women for an average game played in a given round, resulting from two
competing circumstances. On the one hand, women earn the same prize
money as men in all four Grand Slams as of 2007. On the other hand, women
play fewer best-of sets compared to men – women play best-of-three sets
while men play best-of-five sets. In other words, we will examine the gender
disparity caused by two types of directly observed functional conditions in
tennis play, those that are completely equal, and those that are inexplicably
unequal. Equality could be immediately observed in the prize money per
player at each level of the payment structure, or the number of competitors in
women and men play (=128) which results in the same amount of tournament
rounds. Different-across-genders condition might be observed in the amount
of best-of sets played.
In order to conduct our study, we decided to examine prize money paid within
men’s and women’s singles of all four Grand Slams - French Open, Australian
Open, Wimbledon, and US Open in 2016. The data on prize money and scores
in each tournament were obtained from the official web pages of each
individual Grand Slam. List of the web pages can be found in the Reference
section at the end of this article.
48
Table 1 shows the structure of prize money in individual tournaments in €.
Each Grand Slam is originally denominated in its home currency – Australian
Open in Australian $, French Open in €, Wimbledon in £, and US Open in $.
Transformation into only one currency was needed to make the numbers
comparable. We chose € as the common denominator and used daily exchange
rates issued by European Central Bank (ECB) in calculations. Exchange rates
used were those that were issued by ECB on the last day of the given
championship. The dates for each tournament in 2016 are the following:
 Australian Open: 18–31 January 2016,
 French Open: 22 May–5 June 2016,
 Wimbledon: 27 June-10 July 2016,
 US Open: 29 August-11 September 2016.
Table 1 Grand Slam Prize Money in 2016 [in €]
Men's/
Women's
Singles
#
players
paid
Australian
Open
[in €]
French
Open
[in €]
Wimbledon
[in €]
US Open
[in €]
Winner 1 2 501 950 2 000 000 2 346 234 3 106 141
Runner-Up 1 1 234 728 1 000 000 1 173 117 1 553 071
Semifinalists 2 519 886 500 000 586 558 776 535
Quarterfinalists 4 259 943 294 000 293 279 399 361
Round of 16 8 129 971 173 000 154 851 208 555
Round of 32 16 63 361 102 000 93 849 124 246
Round of 64 32 38 991 60 000 58 656 68 502
Round of 128 64 22 420 30 000 35 194 38 439
Total 128 10 552 378 12 032 000 12 735 357 16 118 253
Source: The official web pages of Grand Slam tournaments
As discussed above, the goal of this article is to study prize money paid for an
average game played at each level of the payment structure. Hence, we
needed to collects the second ingredient data – the average amount of games
played. To do it, we processed eight scoring tables (four Grand Slams for
women’s singles and four Grand Slams for men’s singles) and for each of them
we calculated the amount of games played by all 128 players. In the case of
men’s draw in 2016 US Open, we needed to perform modification of amount of
games played by tennis player Novak Djokovic. Firstly, this modification
resulted from the fact that Djokovic had advanced to the third round of the
2016 US Open by walkover because his scheduled opponent had withdrawn
due to health conditions. Secondly, Djokovic played only one set in third round
and free-passed to the next round again due to his opponent’s injuries (US
Open, 2016). Since Djokovic ended up in a runner-up position with only 167
games played, we decided to replace it with the average composed of games
played by the winner and two semifinalists. The resulting number of games for
Djokovic was 227. No other modifications were implemented.
We define the average number of games played at the ith level of the payment
structure of the given Grand Slam (GS) as follows:
49
i
iN
j
GS
jig
N
games
GS
igAVGgames


 1
(1)
where g represents gender, represents the number of players at the ith
level of payment structure, j stands for the individual player at the given level
of payment structure. Note that there are 8 levels of payment structure in
each Grand Slam tournament (see the first column in Table 1) and there are
the same amounts of players at each of those levels across Grand Slams and
genders (see the second column in Table 1) – ranging from one player at the
first and the second level, winner and runner-up, respectively, to 64 players at
the eighth level which also represents the first round of the tournament.
Moreover, ∑ = 128 for each GS and g. Hence, we omitted subscript GS and
g in variable.
Further, we define prize money earnt for an average game played at the ith
level of payment structure of the given Grand Slam (GS) as follows:


 iN
j
GS
ji
GS
ig
izeMoney
AVGgamesGS
igizeAVGgame
1
Pr
Pr (2)
where stands for prize money paid to the jth player at the ith
level of payment structure of the given Grand Slam (GS).
Finally, we define the financial gap in prize money – how much more prize
poney per game women earn compared to men in percent, as follows:
%100*
,
,,
Pr
PrPr
GS
Meni
GS
Meni
GS
Womeni
izeAVGgame
izeAVGgameizeAVGgameGS
igap

 (3)
Variables defined in (1), (2) and (3) will be used in our analysis. Based on the
nature of our research question and the fact that we are employing data only
for one-year period (2016 Grand Slam tournaments), the methodology for our
study is limited to basic statistical and visual representation of the data, while
more complex analysis is not feasible. Nevertheless, we will provide a
comprehensive examination of the studied phenomena and will deliver results
that will function as a starting point for further study. As outlined, we will
proceed in the examination of our research question as follows. First, we will
quantify the average prize money for each level of the payment structure in all
four Grand Slams for both, men and women. Second, using the nominal
gender gap (the difference) in payments of tennis players we will be able to
calculate and visualize how much were women paid for an average game
played in Grand Slams. This result would then serve as an answer for the
research question formulated in Section 2.
50
5 Results
Using scoring tables and formula (1) we calculated for each level i
of payment structure defined for either Australian Open, French Open,
Wimbledon, or US Open, paid to men and then women.
Figure 1 Average amount of games at each prize money level – Women and
men comparison
Source: Authors’ own calculations, the official web pages of Grand Slam tournaments
Figure 1 plots the values. The upper four lines represent the average number
of games played by male tennis players and the lower four lines represent the
female values. Column bars placed below the lines show the differences
between the amount of games played by men and women at each level of
payment structure averaged across four Grand Slams.
This figure clearly confirms our assumption from Section 3 - women play fewer
games than men in each round of Grand Slam tournaments. As the next step,
we also wanted to check whether the extent of this difference is proportional
to the number of sets played. We have calculated the average number of sets
and games played at each level of payment structure across Grand Slams for
men and women and then we expressed the differences between male and
female players in terms of men’s values. Figure 2 summarizes our
observations and shows that our assumption from Section 3 was almost
correct - women play 40% fewer games on average than men in each round of
Grand Slam tournaments based on the data from 2016 championships.
The core part of our study is to calculate the financial gap in average prize
money paid for a game played by men and women at each level of payment
structure of four Grand Slam tournaments. Using formula (1) we calculated
the average number of games at each level. Employing these numbers in
formula (2) and inserting prize money values from Table 1 we arrived to the
desired values representing the prize money earnt for an average game played
at each level of payment structure of every Grand Slam. Using formula (3) we
then calculated the financial gaps. Table 2 brings the summary.
51
Figure 2 Average number of games versus sets – proportional representation
Source: Authors’ own calculations, the official web pages of Grand Slam tournaments
As shown in Table 2, women were paid more for each game played compared
to men in all 2016 Grand Slam tournaments. This gap represented in all four
championships more than 60% on average in lines with our prediction. The
highest difference can be seen in case of prize money paid to runner-up tennis
players in Wimbledon – prize money obtained for each game played by
Angelique Kerber was 7 873 € while the respective game prize money obtained
by male runner-up Milos Raonic was 4 190 €. Generally, the highest
differences in game prize money representing more than 80 % are visible in
runner-up level of payment structures of all four Grand Slams (the same
pattern is visible in Figure 1 and Figure 2). Since we are processing the data
only for one season, we will not raise any conclusions based on variances in
magnitudes across levels. Nevertheless, the predicted pattern of 60 % gap in
prize money in men’s versus women’s singles was showed to hold in all 2016
Grand Slams.
Table 2 Average financial gap in prize money per game - How much more
women earn for a game
Men's/Women's
Singles
Australian
Open
French Open Wimbledon US Open
Winner 48% 53% 59% 76%
Runner-up 85% 85% 88% 81%
Semifinalist 72% 54% 58% 72%
Quarterfinalist 68% 66% 81% 65%
Round of 16 66% 54% 49% 62%
Round of 32 70% 57% 61% 48%
Round of 64 78% 67% 76% 74%
Round of 128 72% 72% 79% 70%
Average per
Grand Slam
70% 63% 69% 69%
Source: Authors’ own calculations, the official web pages of Grand Slam tournaments
52
6 Discussion
In the previous section we showed that there is a financial gap in prize money
paid for a game played by men and women in all four 2016 Grand Slam
tournaments. The amount of this financial gap is significant and reached 60%
on average, systematically in all four championships – Australian Open, French
Open, Wimbledon, and US Open. In other words, women earnt 60% more
money on average than men for the same effort exerted in a game.
This gap which favors women in prize money obtained could be considered
extremely controversial in the current world still exhibiting the tendency of
men earning more money in a wide spectrum of activities. This gender
inequality has its roots in beliefs about sex differences, such as physical
strength or ability to cope with stressful situations. In popular and medialized
sports, it is common to observe an opposite direction of prize money gap than
the one identified in Grand Slam tournaments. This is mostly visible in team
sports such as football or basketball, but also in individual sports such as golf.
Valian (1999) argues that this serious problem which systematically places
women to worse positions than men not only in a matter of salary, but also in
a matter of professional status is caused by stereotyping and gender schemas
that cannot be changed or removed over the short run8
.
The fact that all four Grand Slams offer the equal prize money for both
genders while women demonstrably play fewer best-of sets might seem unfair
and intriguing. The other view, however, is that the International Tennis
Federation together with individual Grand Slam national organizations exert
effort to flatten the present gender inequality in sports and that equal
payment structure for male and female tennis players might stand as the
pioneering example for future development of women’s position in sports.
Continuing in this debate is not the aim of our article; however, we feel that it
is important to summarize the views of this phenomenon in media. We stress
out that our intent is to discuss the calculated financial gap that is currently
present in the payment structure of Grand Slam tournaments objectively and
without taking any sides in judgement.
There are two possible scenarios that are extensively discussed in media and
that react to the fact that Grand Slams offer the same prize money to men
and women while the number of best-of sets played by both genders remains
unequal: (1) Women and men should both play best-of-5 sets in Grand Slams
and everyone would get equal prize money, (2) Number of best-of sets should
remain unchanged (men play best-of-five sets and women play best-of-three
sets in Grand Slams) and men should get proportionally more prize money.
We will not discuss option (2) as it suggests bringing the tennis world a few
decades back in history and does not offer a solution which would cope with
gender inequality in sports. Option (1) is thus more frequently proposed
8
Trolan (2013) discussed the gender stereotyping in tennis and suggested that athletic
achievements of women are devalued by the language used by commentators. This
language often exhibits the pattern of trivialization when women are called “babes” or
“girls” and propose the idea that men are the dominant gender.
53
solution and there are two competing camps proposing arguments for and
against its feasibility. The first camp arguing against the amount-of-best-ofsets
equalization suggests physical constraints of women according to which
women are not capable of playing five sets. The next argument they discuss is
that women’s play is usually longer than men’s play which in five sets setting
might cause extremely long matches and this might affect media coverage.
The counterarguments are built on observations from other sports, such as
biathlon, in which women are capable of the same performance as men and
they suggest that this should hold for all sports. Other arguments are based
on claim that women train the same amount of time as men and hence should
be presented with the equal opportunities.
The following subsection examines the extent of the studied financial gap in
nominal terms and attempts to provide nominal value of this gap in future
periods.
6.1 Development of the Financial Gap in Future Periods
The goal of this section is to comment on the future development of prize
money in Grand Slam tournaments and to attempt to provide an estimate of
prize money paid to male and female winners per game played in future Grand
Slams. By this, we want to demonstrate the nominal magnitude of the gap
calculated in section 5 and its effect on yearly increasing prize money paid to
winners. As outlined, in this section we will concentrate only on the financial
gaps present at the first level of payment structure – prize money paid to
winners of Grand Slams. The reason why we are limiting our discussion only to
one level of prize money is the limited availability of historical data for overall
decompositions of payment structure and overall prize money for men’s or
women’s singles as a whole. Data on prize money paid to winners could be
found at official web pages of each individual Grand Slam – Australian Open,
French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open – or in historical articles commenting
on each-year Grand Slam titles.
The overall gap in each of 2016 Grand Slams was calculated to be more than
60% (Table 2). In the case of the winner level of payment structure we
observe variation among championships ranging from 48% (Australian Open)
to 76% (US Open). Based on the definition of formulas (1) and (2), individual
gaps calculated through formula (3) only depends on the average amount of
games played by men or women at the given level of payment structure. This
follows from the fact that prize money for each level are equal for both
genders. Furthermore, as we showed in section 5, the amount of games
played depends on the amount of sets in the play. Assuming that the rules
customizing the number of sets played in all Grand Slams remain the same in
next periods (women are playing best-of-three sets while men play best-offive
sets), we can expect only a small variation in the number of games played
at each level of payment structure throughout tennis seasons. As a result, we
expect that there would be only a small variation in the average number of
games played by winners in future Grand Slam tournaments, if any. Therefore,
without a loss of generality, we will take an average of the number of games
played by male and female winners, and also of gaps in prize money paid to
54
winners which we calculated for each 2016 Grand Slam, and will assume the
average numbers for winners as a constant entering future Grand Slam
seasons. Table 4 provides a summary.
Table 4 Average amount of games played by men and women - Winners in
Grand Slams
Australian
Open
French
Open
Wimbledon
US
Open
Average
# games Women 155 136 137 129 139
# games Men 230 208 218 281 234
Gap 48% 53% 59% 76% 59%
Source: Authors’ own calculations, the official web pages of Grand Slam tournaments
As the next step, we estimated the future development of prize money paid to
winners 4 years ahead - till 2020. To obtain these values we used historical
data on winner prize money and by employing the exponential trend line, we
forecasted future prize money for winners9
. For each Grand Slam we only
utilized the data from periods of prize money parity. The rationale for this is
offered by our study design in which we are analyzing the gap resulting from
two competing circumstances - women earn the same prize money as men in
all four Grand Slams while at the same time, women play fewer best-of sets
compared to men. Hence, it would be of no value to study periods in which
prize money for winners was not equal across genders. The milestones for
prize money parity were identified in section 2 as follows:
 Australian Open – from 2001,
 French Open – from 2006,
 Wimbledon – from 2007,
 US Open – from 1973.
Figure 3 shows the development of prize money for winners in home currency,
that is Australian Open in Australian $, French Open in €, Wimbledon in £, and
US Open in $. The solid thick line displays historical data ranging from the
year in which individual Grand Slams announced prize money equality till
2016. The solid thin line represents exponential trend till 2020.
Based on the estimated values for future prize money for winners and by
employing the average values from Table 4, we were able to calculate prize
money paid for a game played by male and female winners in 2020. Table 5
presents the values in comparison to real 2016 Prize Money.
9
We employed the exponential trend because it best fitted the historical data compared
to the linear or quadratic trend. The assessment was made based on values of R².
55
Figure 3 Winner Prize Money trend in Grand Slams – True development and
exponential trend
Source: Authors’ own calculations, the official web pages of Grand Slam tournaments
It can be seen that the highest increase in winner prize money was estimated
for US Open which also created the widest nominal gap in prize money paid for
a game among four Grand Slams – in 2020, women are estimated to obtain
approximately $20 000 more prize money for one game played compared to
men.
Table 5 Prize Money paid to winners in 2016 and 2020 Grand Slam – overall
and for a game played
Prize Money for
Winners in Year
Australian
Open [$]
French
Open [€]
Wimbledon
[£]
US Open
[$]
2016 - real 3 850 000 2 000 000 2 000 000 3 500 000
Game Prize - women 24 839 14 706 14 599 27 132
Game Prize - men 16 739 9 615 9 174 12 456
2020 - estimate 4 907 985 2 548 806 3 522 984 6 971 010
Game Prize - women 35 246 18 304 25 300 50 061
Game Prize - men 20 952 10 881 15 039 29 759
Source: Authors’ own calculations, the official web pages of Grand Slam tournaments
Conclusions
This article examined prize money of four Grand Slam tournaments: US Open,
Australian Open, Wimbledon, and French Open in 2016. All of these
tournaments pay equal prize money to male and female tennis players as of
2007 when Australian Open as the last championship announced prize money
parity. Although men and women are paid equally they still play a different
number of best-of sets in Grand Slams – men play best-of-five sets while
women playing best-of-three sets. These two competing circumstances have
56
given rise to a financial gap in prize money obtained for a game played by
men compared to women. The present paper estimated this financial gap for
2016 Grand Slam tournaments.
The results of the analysis showed that women earn 60% more prize money
for a game played on average. This difference in salaries was systematically
presented in all four Grand Slam tournaments. Gaps were also calculated for
each level of payment structure ranging from winner prize money to prize
money paid to 64 losers from the first round of the championships. The gaps
varied across individual levels from 48% to 88%.
We also demonstrated the nominal magnitude of the gap computed for 2016
Grand Slams and its effect on year-to-year increasing prize money that are
paid to winners. We estimated future prize money for winners using
exponential trend lines and employing 2016 gap we calculated prize money
paid for a game played by winning women or men. Results showed the widest
financial gap in nominal terms in the case of US Open championship. We
estimated that in 2020, a female winner will be earning $50 061 for a game
played while a male winner would obtain only $29 759 for the same effort in
play.
The outputs that favor women in prize money obtained could be considered
extremely controversial in the current world still exhibiting the tendency of
men earning more money in a wide spectrum of activities. The aim of this
paper was hence to approach the gap quantitatively and deliver a
comprehensive analysis of factual numbers without assessing any subjective
judgments or beliefs about sex differences.
Finally, this article represents a pilot study of the phenomena of prize money
in Grand Slams. We are not aware of any other paper which would discuss the
financial gap in prize money obtained by a game played by men and women.
The topic is very wide and covers several fields from sociology to behavioral
finance. We can raise several recommendations for future research. Firstly, we
employed data from 2016 Grand Slams only. The future research should
concentrate on more Grand Slam seasons. Secondly, the data were processed
with the use of basic statistical methods and the main part of the methodology
was based on graphical visualization of the data. For the future research we
recommend more complex statistical methods. Eventually, the study could be
extended to other professional tennis tournaments organized by the
Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), and the Women’s Tennis Association
(WTA).
Acknowledgments
Support of Masaryk University within the project MUNI/A/0916/2015
“Behavioral and knowledge aspects of trading and pricing financial assets” is
gratefully acknowledged.
57
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