Tennis writer Ben Rothenberg has called Women’s Tennis Association founder Billie Jean King a cynical capitalist seeking money from Saudi Arabia. He also lambasted WTA players for lacking star power and “dropping the baton” by going absent or quitting the tour.
Rothenberg, who hyped the WTA in the New York Times for several years alongside staff writer Christopher Clarey, slammed the WTA on his “No Challenges Remaining” podcast, which he founded with WTA employee Courtney Nguyen, a LGBT activist and former lawyer who wrote for Sports Illustrated.
While the ATP and WTA have organized tournaments in China, UAE and Qatar for years, players such as Andy Murray and legends such as John McEnroe have stated their opposition to taking Saudi money, which Chris Evert calls “sports washing”. Rothenberg said that many people are shocked that King and the WTA would deal with Saudi Arabia despite the hereditary regime’s reputation for human rights violations and repression of women and gays.
“She gave it her blessing. It was shocking for people, honestly. They were like, wow, Billie Jean King who became famous as this icon of feminism and champion of LGBT rights, and in case you missed it, Saudi Arabia is not known for its feminism nor its LGBT rights. It was jarring for people,” said Rothenberg.
“I am not that shocked about Billie being on the side of business. Billie is a businesswoman, very strongly, and the founder of the tour on a business level, and worked very hard to keep the tour afloat on a business level, and had a partnership with a cigarette company for decades in this tour, which was also seen as a compromise and an un-ideal way to keep a business afloat,” Rothenberg said. “Billie does have some cynicism there and some capitalistic instincts. I’m not surprised she would take the side of this. But I can understand completely why people are taken aback by her giving her blessing in this way.”
Rothenberg and his guest Tumaini Carayol, who covers tennis for The Guardian, ridiculed the WTA for failing to announce a location for the year-end WTA finals, previously held in China.
“It’s almost July,” said Carayol. “They are improvising the tour calendar.”
“Every year they don’t have this together,” said Rothenberg. “Third July in a row where we don’t know where the year-end championships are going to be.”
They added that the WTA have not listed Wuhan, Shenzhen nor Guadalajara for tournaments this year, and they might be saving a 1000-point event for Saudi Arabia while seeking a path toward equal prize money for men and women by the year 2027.
“It’s great to talk equal prize money or whatever. But we don’t know what the ATP’s prize money will be in 2027,” said Carayol. “I wouldn’t like to see the WTA affected. I don’t want to say go bankrupt, but chasing the market set by the ATP.”
“It’s weird to say our plan is to be equal, because you don’t know where the ATP is going to be,” said Rothenberg.
Carayol claimed that 2009 was “probably the closest the tours were to equal prize money. From that point, the gap just widened again. The gap has been continuing to widen in recent years.”
Carayol blamed this in part on WTA’s youtube channel and failure to promote itself. “I just want to see the tour promote itself and give itself the best chance in its own lane. Promote the players, promote the sport. Make it appealing for people, make people want to come and see it, which isn’t happening now. For political reasons, they don’t have a Tiktok page. They’ve not done a good job of promoting the tour itself.”
Rothenberg, meanwhile, slammed the WTA and ATP for tighter restrictions on journalists who seek more access to interview players, coaches, agents and tour representatives. “Access has gotten tougher for journalists,” said Rothenberg, who hasn’t been accredited at major tennis tournaments this year. “The ATP’s marketing strategy is ‘fewer journalists, more Andrey Rublev doing video quizzes being adorable.’ They pump those things out.”
Rothenberg, who is writing a book about Japanese-Haitian-American player Naomi Francois Osaka, noted that Osaka has gone “absent” from tennis after Serena Williams “passed the torch” to her, launching her career into orbit. Williams retired at the 2022 US Open only months after the WTA’s top-ranked Ash Barty abruptly retired at age 25. Anett Kontaveit, age 27, is retiring this week at Wimbledon less than a year after she was ranked #2 going into the US Open, where she lost to Williams.
Recent slam winners Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka “have not broken through to a wider public outside of their home countries,” said Rothenberg. Teen phenom Coco Gauff has also failed to meet the high expectations of her fans in the US, UK and Australia, while the success of Li Na a decade ago was unable to fill stadiums across China.
“There’s arguably a historic lack of star power and household names in women’s tennis right now. (Emma) Raducanu was a big break-out star when she won the US Open, now she’s not in the top 100. (Garbine) Muguruza outside the top 100,” said Rothenberg. “WTA has a special attrition problem. There’s a lot of turnover. Why is it unsustainable? Why are these women having such a tough time staying healthy and happy atop the sport? What has been so corrosive about it physically and mentally and emotionally? It’s not normal. It’s concerning.”
Citing alleged comments by Stacey Allaster, WTA chief from 2009 to 2015 and current chief executive of the United States Tennis Association, Rothenberg said that since the WTA can’t control who wins tournaments, they have to adjust their sails to the winds and try to read the currents to best chart their course.
“They had a lot of seeds planted,” said Rothenberg. “But for whatever reason, a landslide swept the soil away.”
https://nochallengesremaining.podbean.com/e/episode-352a-a-wimbledon-preamble/
Grand Slam Magazine 
To me it’s a slap in the face to all the lives lost in wars to topple dictators to supposedly spread drmocracy(close to 90 countries). Think of how that generates all the livesost in these wars. Last, if the WTA accepts blood money from that murderousvfictator Dalam of Saudi Arabia are we still a democracy at all! Such disregard for out values. The leader of the new wordl
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As a woman I think the WTA is wasting their resources chasing after equal prize money. The #1 problem with women’s tennis is not “equity” but lack of viewing options for fans at home. This sport is frustrating for fans because it is so hard to watch all the matches from ONE single source. WTA should develop a website that delivers live and on demand streaming of every match in every tournament from WTA 125K to all the slams, BJK, United Cup — everything! Offer a 2 tier service: $49/yr. with ads or $99/yr without ads. The site itself could also have ads to help generate revenue.
WTA matches are often poorly attended (even in AO and FO) because people don’t know the stars due to lack of viewing options. The TV model is archaic and limiting, and often behind a paywall like cable which is facing increased cord cutting. Tennis is unique in that there are always so many matches going on simultaneously, and due to its international nature, is often on at odd hours. Fans want the flexibility of being able to pick and choose which match they want to watch, and to watch it On Demand rather than just live. Streaming is a Godsend to tennis, which the WTA is failing to take advantage of to help it reach a much wider audience.
If you make viewing easily accessible to a worldwide audience, fans will start following the stars and attend the matches — just look at F1. Revenue from streaming can then be used to subsidize tournament organizers so they can lower ticket prices which will bring in more fans. Once the sport starts drawing more fans both online and in person, then and only then should we talk about increasing prize money, i.e. instead of trying to carve up the shrinking pie, let’s grow the pie bigger first! Fans do not care about equal prize money, we just want to be able to watch all the matches from one single source online. Think about the fans first, they are your customers.
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