COLUMN - The French Open isn’t underpaying stars, it’s failing everyone else

An ESPN report on Tuesday captured the surface tension: a group of top players, including Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff, expressed “deep disappointment” with prize money at this year’s French Open. On paper, the numbers look healthy. The overall prize pool is rising. Champions will still take home millions. From a distance, it reads like another familiar standoff between wealthy athletes and even wealthier tournaments.

Look closer, and the math tells a different story. According to the same report, Roland Garros generated roughly €395 million in revenue in 2025, with expectations of surpassing €400 million this year. Prize money has increased, but not at the same rate. The players’ share of revenue has slipped, from 15.5 percent in 2024 to a projected figure hovering below 15 percent in 2026. The players’ ask is simple on its face: bring that share closer to 22 percent, in line with other top-tier events on the ATP and WTA calendars.

This is where most coverage stops. Big revenues. Slightly smaller slice. Star players unhappy. But focusing on Sabalenka or Gauff misses the point entirely.

No one is losing sleep over whether a Grand Slam champion earns $2.8 million or $4 million. That is not the pressure point. The real tension lives far from the final weekend, with players ranked 188, 230, 401, 570. The ones flying commercial, covering their own coaching costs, and budgeting their seasons tournament by tournament. The ones for whom a first-round loss is still a meaningful payday, and a missed cut can mean falling behind on expenses that do not pause.

If there is an elephant in the room, it is not elite compensation. It is the fragility of the middle and lower tiers of the sport. That is also why the recurring suggestion that tennis needs a players’ union never quite lands. Not because it is a bad idea in theory, but because it is structurally inconvenient in practice.

A real union would have to represent the majority. And the majority in tennis is not the top 10. It is not even the top 100. It is the hundreds of players trying to stay financially afloat. Any meaningful negotiation would inevitably raise the question of redistribution, not just from tournaments to players, but within the player ranks themselves.

Would the top tier embrace that? Would players who already command the largest share of prize money and endorsements push for a system that shifts more resources downward? You do not need a formal vote to see the problem. Which is why the more important failure here belongs elsewhere.

The Women's Tennis Association and the Association of Tennis Professionals exist to represent players. That is their mandate, at least in theory. They are the closest thing tennis has to a unified voice, the institutions positioned to translate player concerns into leverage.

So where are they? Because this is the moment where leverage is obvious. If the ATP and WTA walked into a room with the four Grand Slams and said, plainly, that unless players received 25 percent of tournament revenue, their members would not participate, the entire conversation would change overnight. Not gradually. Immediately.

No one is paying to watch a French Open final between world No. 579 and No. 711. That is not disrespect. It is economic reality. The value of the event is inseparable from the presence of the best players in the world. Without them, the product collapses. And everyone involved understands that.

Which is why the current posture feels less like a negotiation and more like a controlled release of pressure. Statements are issued. Prize pools increase incrementally. Percentages shift just enough to keep the conversation moving, but not enough to alter the structure.

There is a reason for that. The tours themselves are not neutral actors. They benefit from the existing ecosystem. Media rights, sponsorships, and the overall growth of the sport all flow through a system that has proven, for those at the top, to be highly effective. Pushing aggressively against the Slams is not just a strategic decision. It is a financial one.

And so the system stabilizes. The Slams continue to grow revenues. Prize money rises, but at a slower pace. Top players express frustration, but stop short of coordinated action. Lower-ranked players, who might benefit most from disruption, cannot afford to risk the opportunities they have. That last point is the hinge on which everything turns.

If there were ever a true boycott or refusal to play, it would require participation across the rankings. But the players ranked outside the top 100 do not experience the tour the same way as those at the top. For them, a Grand Slam appearance is not incremental income. It is survival. It funds the next stretch of the season, pays for coaching, keeps a career alive. They are the least able to say no. Which makes them the reason the system holds.

The paradox is hard to ignore. The players who would benefit most from a more equitable distribution are the ones least positioned to demand it. The players with the platform to push for change must weigh that push against their own standing within the current structure. And the organizations capable of bridging that gap remain, at best, cautious.

None of this makes the players wrong. The numbers justify their frustration. When revenues climb into the hundreds of millions and the percentage allocated to prize money declines, even slightly, the optics matter. More importantly, the underlying economics matter.

But this is not ultimately a prize money problem. It is a governance problem. It is about who has a seat at the table, who sets the terms, and who benefits from the sport’s continued growth. It is about a system that has modernized in presentation and global reach, but remains rooted in an older distribution of power.

Other major sports have spent decades aligning stakeholders, building long-term support systems, and integrating player representation into decision-making. Tennis, at its most prestigious level, continues to operate through a patchwork of competing interests.

That does not make it broken. In many ways, it is working exactly as designed. But it does make moments like this inevitable. Players will continue to push. Tournaments will continue to respond. Prize pools will rise. Percentages will be debated. And the structure will remain largely unchanged, unless the organizations positioned between players and tournaments decide to act differently. The frustration is real. The growth is real. The question is whether anyone with the power to change how that growth is shared is willing to use it.