"The WTA can't afford it" - Serena Williams' ex-coach Patrick Mouratoglou on pay disparity between men's and women's tennis players
Renowned tennis coach Patrick Mouratoglou recently gave his take on the pay gap between male and female tennis players.
The Grand Slams and some of the top-tier events (ATP Masters 1000 and WTA 1000) in tennis offer equal pay to both men and women. Unfortunately, however, that is not the case for lower-level tournaments.
It should also be noted that not all ATP Masters and WTA 1000 events offer equal prize money.
On Wednesday (March 15), Patrick Mouratoglou took to Instagram to talk about the significant income disparity between the ATP and WTA tours.
"I think we all would like men and women to be paid the same. The thing that people need to understand is that you have two entities – you have the ATP and you have the WTA. ATP makes a certain amount in terms of business and WTA makes a certain amount. The amount the ATP makes is much much much bigger than the amount the WTA makes," Mouratoglou said.
The Frenchman claimed that the ATP generates up to 10 times the revenue as the WTA in TV rights for the same event. He further opined that even if the WTA desired to pay more, they wouldn't be able to afford it.
"The TV rights sometimes it’s on the same event it’s ten times more for men than for women; 10 times more. Even if the WTA would want to pay women player the same amount as ATP would pay men player I don’t think they would be able to do it. They can’t afford it," he said.
Patrick Mouratoglou also spoke about the possibility of merging the ATP and WTA tours, which he believes would be a significant step towards reducing and eventually ending the pay gap.
"To consider that women should be paid the same percentage as men makes sense," he said. "And this would be an equal way to treat both. We can also say that it was in the plans to merge ATP and WTA."
"It would become possible to pay men and women the same amount and until they are merged I don’t think it will be possible because just WTA doesn’t have enough money to pay women as much as men," he added.
Novak Djokovic is the greatest returner of all time, says Patrick Mouratoglou
According to Patrick Mouratoglou, Novak Djokovic is the greatest returner in the history of tennis. Djokovic took the top spot on the Frenchman's list of the five greatest returners in tennis history.
"Novak has the greatest return of all times. Even some of the best servers in the world have terrible statistics on his serve when they had to play him," Mouratoglou said.
Djokovic has a 15-1 record this season. However, he was not allowed to compete at the Indian Wells Masters as United States entry laws still require international travelers to be vaccinated. The Serb is also unlikely to play in next week's Miami Masters.