- Jul 25, 2010
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Market forces dictate that professional men are worth more than the women for the simple fact that they are more in demand from tennis fans which is backed by the revenue the mens' tour generates in comparison to the womens' outside of the Grand Slams. And by a huge margin I might add, it's not even close.
The best and most popular players subsidise everyone. I can't prove it but I think it'd be fair to say that Serena Williams brings in more fans/cash than Johnny no name ranked 500 in the world.
The standard of men's tennis is of a much higher caliber. With the exception of one or 2 women watching an average professional women's tennis match is akin to watching your average 13, 14 year old boy contest. It's all right but hardly worth lucrative money
This is probably the best case for more money, but it's still full of problems. If being the best of the best without being categorised by age/gender is what's important, why draw the line at human beings? We could just have two robots at each end playing the perfect rally. More realistically, we could have drugged up superman playing (if they aren't already).
At the end of the day there's no mathematical formula to prove who deserves to get what. It boils down to competing intuitions and there will always be inconsistencies. But if the ATP want to pay women just as much as the men I really don't see the big deal.