Equal Pay in Tennis: Too Little, or Too Late?

On 1 October 2026, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) announced that, from the 2027 season, every combined WTA 1000 tournament will award women and men equal prize money. 

These are major tournaments below the Grand Slams where both the men’s and women’s tours compete. The Italian Open in Rome, the National Bank Open in Montreal and Toronto, and the Cincinnati Open in Ohio will join tournaments that already offer equal rewards. 

The announcement marks an important step for women's tennis and offers a wider example of progress for female athletes. It builds on decades of campaigning by players such as Billie Jean King. Celebrating the achievement, however, should not prevent us from questioning why it has taken so long — or how much remains unfinished.  

This announcement fulfils part of a commitment first made in June 2023. That plan established targets for equal prize money at combined major tour events by 2027, with single-week WTA 1000 and 500 events set to follow by 2033. The latest announcement confirms the combined WTA 1000 milestone, not equality throughout the sport. What, then, happens to women competing outside the category covered by this announcement? 

Tennis has a long history of unequal financial rewards. In 1971, King became the first female athlete to earn $100,000 in prize money in a single year. Yet when she won the US Open in 1972, she received $10,000, while men’s champion Ilie Năstase received $25,000. Both had won their respective singles competitions, but their rewards reflected very different valuations of those achievements. 

The following year, the US Open became the first Grand Slam to offer equal prize money. Other tournaments took considerably longer. Venus Williams later helped campaign for equality at Wimbledon and Roland Garros; by 2007, all four Grand Slams offered equal prize money. The current announcement therefore extends a principle already established at tennis’s most prestigious competitions, rather than introducing a radical new idea.  

Disparities have also appeared in players’ annual earnings, as seen in more recent years and tournaments. In 2015, men’s world number one Novak Djokovic earned approximately $21.65 million in prize money, compared with approximately $10.58 million for women’s world number one Serena Williams. However, these totals require careful interpretation: players’ earnings depend on which tournaments they enter and how far they progress. Their annual totals cannot be treated as a direct comparison of payment for identical results.   

The more pertinent question is whether women and men receive equivalent rewards for corresponding achievements at the same tournament. That is what makes the 2027 commitment significant: at the combined WTA 1000 events previously outside the equal-prize-money group, women will no longer compete for a smaller overall prize fund than men.  

Nevertheless, the timing complicates the celebration. By 2027, 54 years will have passed since the US Open introduced equal prize money. The comparison raises an uncomfortable question: if equality was possible at one major tournament in 1973, why has extending it across this category required more than half a century? 

In its 2023 plan, the WTA described gradual increases as necessary to make the changes sustainable for players and tournaments. The latest announcement also introduces a Tournament Investment Fund, intended to support selected markets and advance the equal-prize-money initiative. These measures suggest that equality requires financial planning and institutional investment, not simply a public declaration. 

This distinction matters for the future of women’s sport. Tennis’s announcement offers a concrete example of an institution committing to equivalent financial rewards at major shared events. Though it would be premature to assume the same model can simply be transferred to every sport, or that one announcement resolves the wider debate, the useful question is what other sporting organisations can learn from the campaigning, funding and accountability behind the change. 

Ultimately, ‘too little’ and ‘too late’ need not mean that progress is worthless. An achievement can be meaningful while remaining overdue and incomplete. The 2027 milestone should be welcomed precisely because the financial recognition of women’s achievements matters — not because it allows the sport to declare its work finished. 

Perhaps the announcement’s most radical implication is not that women will receive equal prize money at these tournaments, but that unequal rewards become harder to defend elsewhere. Is this a decisive step towards women’s equality in sport, or does calling it radical reveal how limited our expectations of equality still are? 

Image ideas: Source: Wikimedia