By Chris Oddo | @TheFanChild | Tuesday July 4, 2023
As rumors of the ATP and WTA Tours going striking a deal with Saudi Arabia swirl, players are coming out in favor of doing business in the Kindom, despite Saudi Arabia’s poor record on human and women’s rights.
On Tuesday Ons Jabeur expressed her views, and said that she hopes the WTA Tour doesn’t get left out of any potential deals.
“I think is a completely different situation than golf,” Jabeur said, adding: “If it benefits for the player, I'm 100 percent there.”
Jabeur and other players believe that Saudi Arabia is making an effort to give women more rights, and she says that it’s time for a change.
“I hope in Saudi they will not just invest with ATP, I hope with WTA,” she said. “I believe in Saudi they're doing great giving women more rights. It's time to change things. Believe it or not, we have the best two womens in Arabic world right now playing in tennis. It's now or never. I hope they really invest in WTA.”
American Jessica Pegula believes that Saudi Arabia could help the women’s tour get closer to equal prize money.
"If they (Saudi Arabia) could help getting us to equal prize money, though there are negatives, there's a lot of positives that can come out of it," she said.
The men have also opened up to the idea of going to Saudi Arabia, which has already invested heavily in football, Formula One and golf.
After two years of controversy, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia brokered a merger between the LIV golf tour and the PGA.
Some accuse Saudi Arabia of engaging in “sportwashing,” using sports to help gloss over myriad human rights issues, but others see it differently.
“It hasn't happened yet, but I think it's fair to be open to the discussion,” ATP World No.4 Casper Ruud said on Monday. “It's a lot of debate obviously in many different sports. Whether that's good or not, I think it seems to me that they are trying to modernize the country a lot and hosting these sport events.
“So you can call it sportwashing or whatever you want. But in the end, I think it's good that the country, they have the economy and they want to be big in sports. I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to do that.”
Even Andy Murray, who has been opposed to playing exhibitions in Saudi Arabia in the past, has started to come around.
But he doesn’t seem convinced that it’s a good idea.
“In the past when we were asked to go and play there, we were asked to go and play exhibition tournaments,” he said. “If they become major tournaments on the tour, it becomes a slightly different question, and it's a difficult one, really, based on how the tour and the rankings and everything work, how important they are to get into other events and stuff. When you start missing them, you obviously get penalized for that.
“It's definitely something I would have to think about. Unfortunately it's the way that a lot of sports seem to be going now.”