By Richard Pagliaro | @Tennis_Now | Friday, January 3, 2024
Photo credit: TennisTV
Novak Djokovic knows tennis is a bottom-line business.
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The Serbian superstar is pro tennis all-time prize money leader earning more than $185 million over the course of his glorious career.
Asked his assessment of Nick Kyrgios' assertion that tennis players are "absurdly" underpaid, Djokovic fully backed Kyrgios' claim.
Compared to other major sports, tennis players are not receiving a fair piece of the financial pie, Djokovic said.
"I'm just going to state a fact. It's not my opinion," Djokovic told the media in Brisbane. "The fact is that that's true, what [Kyrgios is] saying. The pie split between the governing bodies in major sports, all major American sports, like NFL, NBA, baseball, NHL, is 50% maybe more, some less, but around 50%.
"Ours is way lower than that. It is true. Obviously it's slightly - well, quite different sport because it's international, played globally. We are under differ rules and regulations of different countries and legislations, taxes, et cetera, et cetera.
"Obviously each tournament is independently governing their own prize money split. Then you have ATP, WTA, then obviously Grand Slams that are separate entities that can do whatever they like. It's quite fragmented from that point of view."
Former Wimbledon finalist Kyrgios called player prize money "a joke" compared to other sports, particularly given the fact tennis is international.
“The tour is ridiculous compared to any other sport,” Kyrgios said. “It’s absurd, really, the amount of travel we do, considering we don’t even get paid what we are supposed to get paid, as well, which is a joke."
Djokovic, a former ATP Player Council President, and Vasek Pospisil founded The Professional Tennis Players Association with the aim of giving pro players total representation in the game's decision-making process.
In Brisbane, Djokovic reiterated his long-held claim that the ATP Board of Directors structure is broken and does not adequately represent player interest.
"We have a problem in the very—how can I say—structure of the ATP is that as players we only have the 50% of that organization," Djokovic said. "There's a lot of times there was conflict of interest between tournaments and players. We wanted different thing.
"We are part of the same system, and we can't go without each other, but we are oftentimes in conflictual situations.
"We want more money, they maybe don't want to give us as much money when we talk about the prize money. There's so many different layers of the prize money that you have to look into. It's not that simple.
"In essence what Nick was talking about is true. If you see it from a kind of general overview of just the pure percentage that players are getting from the revenue share, is way lower than most of the other global sports, American sports particularly."