As tennis stars protest, French Open fans flock to see the lower-ranked players they say they support

PARIS — “You can always have more, but what’s the point?”

Friday at the French Open, one lifelong tennis fan from Paris was unimpressed not by events on the clay courts, but underneath Court Philippe-Chatrier, in the tournament’s media center and interview rooms.

“It’s completely out of order. You don’t do that just at the start of the tournament. I understand it’s a tactic but it’s not very elegant, and elegance is important,” said Joel Assoun during an interview on the Roland Garros grounds. Assoun was just one of the fans who packed the sun-kissed outside courts — and Suzanne-Lenglen, the venue’s second show-court — to watch players from the lower 100s and 200s of the world rankings fight for a place in one of the four most prestigious tournaments in the sport.

In the interview rooms, the biggest stars in the game, who shortened their duties to 10 minutes of news conference and a five-minute video interview just for Friday, said that their protest over Grand Slam prize money is designed to support those very players.

“It’s not about me,” women’s world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka said in her news conference. “It’s about the players who are lower in the ranking suffering. It’s not easy to live in this tennis world with that percentage that we are earning. As the world No. 1, I have to stand up and fight for lower-level players.”

Many fans who attended the third round of qualifying here had not even heard about the players’ protest.

The top men’s and women’s players are pushing for the Grand Slams to increase prize money allocation from roughly 15 percent of revenue to 22 percent, which matches up with combined tournaments on their respective ATP and WTA tours.

The French Open has this year increased its total prize money by 9.5 percent, to $72.3 million (£53.8m), but the players say their argument is largely about proportionality, not quantity. Some fans, Assoun included, don’t see it that way.

“Given how much the top players earn, I don’t think it’s right for them to go on strike or ask for more money,” he said. “They’re already very, very well paid. Even if the tournament brings in more revenue, I don’t think that’s the point. If anything, I’d be fine with the early rounds being better paid, but for the top 10 to get more money — I don’t think that’s right.”

The French Open and the other three majors, the Australian and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon, have largely focused prize-money increases on those earlier rounds in recent years.

Mohayou Nikiema, who has paid over $115 to return next week for the main-draw action, felt the players’ demands were reasonable. “That’s fair,” he said during an interview. “They are the main actors. If they generate more money, they need to be paid more.”

Fellow fan Stephen Cook can see both sides of the argument. “The tournament invests the money back into the game as well. I’m sympathetic to that,” he said.

The four Grand Slams are organized by their respective national tennis federations. The All England Lawn Tennis Club stages Wimbledon, but it passes on 90 percent of its profits from each tournament to the U.K. Lawn Tennis Association. Much of the hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each tournament generates each year goes back into the events, as well as into the development of tennis in those respective nations.

The players say that the Grand Slams should be putting more of that revenue toward development of the players who play at them, including welfare contributions, which the ATP and WTA already pay.

“Of course, we talk about money,” said men’s world No. 1 Jannik Sinner during a news conference at the Italian Open this month. “The most important (thing) is respect, and we just don’t feel it.”

“They’re not protesting because they think the top 100 are underpaid,” Assoun said. “They’re talking about themselves. I think it’s rubbish.”

Some other fans, including Evan Lamy from Paris, said they would be more sympathetic if the push more clearly benefited players beyond the sport’s elite, but most prolific players in the top 10s on the tours are leading the charge because of their platform. When they speak, their voices are heard.

Sabalenka, Sinner, Iga Świątek, Carlos Alcaraz and Coco Gauff are among the players who last year sent two letters to the Grand Slam organizers, proposing reforms. The media-day protest is an escalation of that strategy. Some of the players have suggested they could boycott a major in the future, including Gauff and Sabalenka at the Italian Open.

“I can’t see that happening,” said Cook, while Nikiema suggested it would be “going too far”.

As for Assoun? He will return for the tournament’s final weekend next month, on which he’s spent $754 for tickets. He and the rest of the fans will hope to see the best players in the world do what they do best. “It does cost a bit, but it’s worth it because it’s a real spectacle,” he said.

Just the logic that the players would like the Grand Slams to follow.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Sports Business, Tennis, Women’s Tennis

2026 The Athletic Media Company