What a Grand Slam boycott could mean for tennis, from prize money to tickets and the trophy

Just over a fortnight before the French Open, women’s world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka made the most direct statement yet about one possible evolution in the standoff between a group of top tennis stars and its four biggest tournaments over prize money and player benefits.

“At some point we will boycott,” Sabalenka said in a news conference at the Italian Open in Rome. Defending French Open champion Coco Gauff and Australian Open champion Elena Rybakina echoed Sabalenka’s sentiments, days after the collective of top-10 ATP and WTA players greeted the annual increase in prize money at Roland Garros with “collective disappointment.”

Any boycott remains entirely hypothetical, and none of the players who discussed it said that any action of that kind is planned. In a statement sent to The Athletic, the French Tennis Federation said that it “remains fully committed to ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders in global tennis, including speaking directly with individual players.”

But which parts of the four Grand Slams — the Australian, French and U.S. Opens, and Wimbledon — would a boycott meaningfully impact? Which areas would remain relatively unharmed? And what would a tournament without the biggest stars in the sport even look like?

How would a Grand Slam boycott affect the field?

The area that would be most affected by a boycott is the field, but it is also the area that may be least affected.

If several leading players do pull out of events, then the same number of players who would otherwise not have been in the main draw will receive direct entry. The most visible impact will be a less-likely champion. When 81 players boycotted Wimbledon in 1973, the eventual winner was Jan Kodeš, who already had two majors at the time but had won them both on clay. He was a 1972 semifinalist and a 1974 quarterfinalist at Wimbledon, but outside that three-year stretch, Kodeš never went beyond the second round.

That boycott was in solidarity with Nikola Pilić. Pilić had been barred from the tournament by the International Lawn Tennis Federation (now the ITF, the world governing body of tennis that runs all the Grand Slam tournaments) for refusing to play a Davis Cup match for his native Yugoslavia a month earlier.

The contradictory thing about how a boycott affects the field is that it would likely still be a full one. Tennis players eat what they kill and the prospect of winning huge amounts of prize money and rankings points in a less challenging environment would be not go ignored by those further down the rankings.

Any modern-day boycott would also have to include a number of leading players to be meaningful. In a news conference at the Italian Open Tuesday, Coco Gauff joked that it would be a bummer to find out she were the only one doing so.

Would affected Grand Slams adjust their prize money and rankings points?

In the immediate term, the prize money for affected events would likely stay the same. If boycotts went beyond one event, then Grand Slam organizers could adjust their projected revenues to account for their impact and recalculate prize money, but that would be weighed against the desire for top stars to return.

Rankings points would also stay the same, meaning that players who pursue a boycott could face a serious hit — and the repercussions for other competitions would add another reason for any possible collective action to require something close to absolute unity.

The winners of Grand Slams receive 2,000 points. Women’s finalists receive 1,300 points, while men’s finalists received 1,200, with awards for each round dropping by roughly 40 to 50 percent.

Players compete with each other to win matches and earn those points, but they also compete with their performances from the previous season. If Gauff loses in the first round of this year’s French Open, her ranking will plummet, because she will “lose” 1,990 points of the 2,000 she earned for winning it last year.

If the top players don’t play Grand Slams, they will not only forfeit hundreds, if not thousands of new points, but also see the hundreds or thousands they acquired in previous years disappear. Meanwhile, the field that does take part will have the opposite issue. They can go deep in a big tournament with lesser opposition and boost their ranking, in the knowledge that if the field is restored to “normal” next year, they will likely have work to do to defend that boost.

There is a wild card in all this. The WTA and ATP Tours can decide to withdraw rankings points from a tournament. It happened in 2022, when Britain’s national tennis association and the All England Lawn Tennis Club, which operates Wimbledon, prohibited Russian and Belarusian players from entering following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In response, the tours pulled points from the tournament.

That time, no one got any points, so the impact was more evenly distributed, but it still put things out of whack. Elena Rybakina and Novak Djokovic received zero points for their titles, and returned in 2023 with no rankings target on their backs.

How would ticket sales respond?

If you hold a Grand Slam and the best players boycott, will anyone come?

Yes, probably.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Grand Slams have seen attendances rise to record highs as ticket prices have risen. Fans pack show courts and field courts alike. They queue for food and drink and merchandise and soak in the experience of events that have turned themselves into three-week tennis festivals, except Wimbledon, which remains a two-week shrine to the sport and still gets people to queue overnight in a field.

The bulk of ticket sales occur well in advance of the tournaments. Corporate seats, boxes and suites can often be empty during matches because of meals and other engagements, but they are paid for. A lack of star power could see that take a hit, but plenty of top stars who are injured during a big tournament still show up to these events for corporate engagements. Whether they would do that during a boycott would depend on what the players collectively decide is OK and not OK.

Fans who have paid for the chance to see the best in the world on a show court are unlikely to throw away their money. When top players skip ATP Masters 1000 and WTA 1000 events, the rung below a Grand Slam, fans still come in their droves.

How would a boycott hit media rights and sponsorships?

Grand Slam tournaments depend on revenue from three main elements to turn a profit: tickets, media rights and sponsorships. Of those three, media rights offer the four federations that run the Grand Slams the most valuable long-term financial stability, because their current structure relies on longterm deals with huge networks.

All four majors have signed U.S. media rights deals that span roughly a decade. Warner Bros. Discovery will pay $650 million for a 10-year deal to air the French Open through 2035, ESPN’s 12-year deal to air the U.S. Open through 2037 cost $2.04 billion and Wimbledon’s 12-year broadcast deal with ABC and ESPN clocks in at roughly $630 million.

The financial impact on media rights and sponsorship revenue is likely proportional to the length and participation numbers of any Grand Slam boycott.

Because of the long-term nature of these contracts, a top-player boycott of a single Grand Slam would be unlikely to immediately impact media rights revenue. A prolonged boycott by a critical mass of top players could affect how TV networks value Grand Slam tennis in the future, at the end of current media rights deals, but they are not likely to impact current ones. The contracts are signed. Advertisers and sponsors who want advertising space on those networks might expect some recompense for any lost ratings, but ratings for major finals already fluctuate according to who is playing and the matchups involved.

But even then, there are only four tennis majors, and some of them have evolved to become more than just sporting events. Wimbledon and increasingly, the U.S. Open, are strong brands that carry cultural cachet beyond the world of sports. They are also not for sale or up for replacement, which gives them immense power in this dynamic with the players.

As for sponsorships, a boycott of any length would likely mean a loss of brand exposure. That could eventually affect how much a partner is willing to pay a tournament or on what timeline they’re willing to fulfil their financial obligations, but many of the majors’ significant sponsors are long-term partners and a short downturn would not meaningfully affect those relationships.

Is this actually going to happen?

As yet, no. There is no plan for a boycott in place and players’ agreement on its possibility does not mean that it will be set into motion anytime soon. With the French Open so close, the top-10 player group is using that proximity to put pressure on the FFT and other organizers.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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