Novak Djokovic has called out the ATP for not paying tennis players as much as the other athletes in the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL get paid. In tennis, the top-ranked players are paid handsomely by the governing body but the players ranked outside the top 200 struggle to earn a hefty amount on the tour.
The Serbian has earned a huge prize money in his glorious career but he has always been vocal about the aforementioned issue. To solve this, the former World No.1 formed the PTPA (Professional Tennis Players Association) and he has helped many players through his organization.
Djokovic said in a press conference at Brisbane, “We have problem there.We have a problem in the very – how can I say – structure of the ATP is that as players we only have the 50% of that organization. There’s always – not always but a lot of times there was conflict of interest between tournaments and players. We wanted different thing. The pie split between the governing bodies in major sports, all major American sports, like NFL, NBA, baseball, NHL, is 50% maybe more, some less, but around 50%. Ours is way lower than that. It is true,” he said.
Earlier, Djokovic revealed what motivated him to form the PTPA.
He said in an interview with CBS program 60 minutes, “Women and men who are around 200 and lower ranked in the world, they are struggling a lot. They can’t afford a coach, they can’t afford travels, they skip tournaments, many of them leave tennis who are super talented and maybe capable of reaching great heights and successes, but they just can’t make it.”
Meanwhile, Djokovic suffered a quarterfinal loss against World No. 293 Reilly Opelka by 6-7, 3-6 in the Brisbane Open and he will next take part in the Australian Open, set to begin from January 12.
