While much of the world has gone into shutdown entirely, many people are still able to work from home. One group of people who cannot work from home, though, are athletes. Ah, we hear you say, but don’t all tennis players earn millions? Aren’t they all rich enough to handle the slowdown in their income?
According to the coach of tennis legend Serena Williams, Patrick Mouratoglou, that could not be further from the truth. With the tennis season ended early and very unlikely to start back up anytime soon, Mouratoglou spoke about how the system wasn’t right and was leaving many tennis players in financial arrears.
Posting on social media via his Twitter account, Mouratoglou said: “Unlike basketball or football players, tennis players aren’t covered by fixed annual salaries. They’re independent contractors,
“They’re paying for their travels. They’re paying fixed salaries to their coaching staffs, while their own salaries depend on the number of matches they win.”
He continued to raise the discussion about salaries, especially about those lower down the rankings, adding: “However, I find it revolting that the 100th-best player of one of the most popular sports in the world – followed by an estimated one billion fans – is barely able to make a living out of it,”
According to reports in the past, just 250-350 players on the tennis circuit earn enough money to break even or make a profit. That’s not good enough for such a major sport, and hopefully something will change soon to give tennis players a chance to keep earning as they need to.
