Good on Donna for standing up for herself and the WTA but the top players need to put their weight behind this.

Tennis Australia won't care about the Players' Council if Barty says it's good for women tennis fans to have a bigger court 1 to see Naomi Osaka. Barty had massive crowd support in Perth and Adelaide, please make the most of it.

 

She is not realistic and she is comparing apples and oranges.

Grand Slams are sanctioned by ITF and if they want to give equal prize money so be it. ATP is a completely different tour and have it's own govern body and WTA needs to stop trying to share a cup of tea and bring it's own product. I remember reading that Mickey article and I just can't at their failures.

ATP 250 may give 250 points but it does not mean it's a tier lower than WTA Premier. You have no way of selling that idea if they give almost equivalent (if not more) prize money as a WTA Premier event. The potential markets are willing to pay those cash for the players they can get. On top of that, ATP has just Masters/500/250 while WTA has PM/P5/Premier/International. Sorry your Premier event could be just as equivalent to an ATP 250 event.

ATP Cup is no where equivalent to a WTA Premier event. It's a team event that's totally different from what we see in regular draws. Also, these top WTA players need to look themselves. Are they committed to those events? You see so many top ATP players play even the 250s, where are the top WTA players in Internationals? Do they play all the way or withdraw/retired mid matches (or give a Sloane attitude)?

 

I wonder what she thinks about players getting numerous wildcards because of their sponsors or boyfriends.

 

And which numerous wildcards would that be???
Neither wildcard is ever completely fair as it takes away the spot in draw from someone who earned it with ranking.
She received it in Brisbane as promising player and she justified it by reaching SF last year and becoming top 20 player unlike countless wildcards given to Aussie players who never achieved anything.
It is funny how for people like you dating Wawrinka was mortal sin and for that she has to be always put into her "deserved" place.
Anyways Donna now has much hotter boyfriend and has obviously moved on like you should too.

 

good to see Donna Vekic being a strong young woman but I agree with other posters here. energy is there for a misdirected cause

 

Where are the posts?

 

In the entertainment industry you are generally payed what you're worth to an organisation, money comes from the organisers who in turn decide how much to distribute to the players round by round dependant upon how much the tournament itself generates from sponsors, and sponsors will always pay more money for a men's tournament than a women's tournament because the ratings are higher, more tickets are likely to be sold and the tennis is faster and more powerful to watch, it's the same reason why men are paid more in football than women, the men's game generates astronomical, eye watering figures, women's game virtually nothing (outside America) in comparison.

What the WTA and the WTA players need to do is to create more stars to create more publicity for themselves, get more bums on seats, more people watching at home and then bigger sponsorship deals to get the bigger prize money.

With shared tournaments, organisers will always try to put bigger names on the show courts for obvious reasons, it's that simple, fairness doesn't come in to it, it's not an ordinary job, they want stadiums filled and more people at home tuning in, remember there was an argument for Barty to get main court at the French Open last season over Nadal because Barty was number 1, but that is laughable because as said, it's about the dollar signs. Same reason why Serena gets every showcourt going, she's a huge name and pulls the crowds. When it comes to imbalance in smaller tournies in regards to prize money, it really is nothing to do with sexism, they have to work on improving their own product. Nobody in your average high street has a clue who Barty is.

 

Testify Donna!

 

And why did the audience prefer men's matches? At women's matches at that time there were very few spectators.

 

Donna is a good tennis player and a beautiful girl. She expressed her opinion, someone agrees with her, someone does not. Everyone has their own opinion.

 

It may be worth starting to conduct separate men's and women's tournaments. Then there will be no dispute about earnings.

 

Agree with her on Brisbane — they need to sort out that asymmetrical mess of hosting a team event (that requires lots of center court action) and an important individual event at the same time. It may not be wise or else they need two centre courts. Or perhaps they should have better chosen another city for the ATP Cup... (for example Kyrgios's hometown Canberra?)

Her Adelaide complaint seems frivolous. She said "some days" they had more matches on centre court". Well? What about the other days?

But her worst opinion was regarding player union. She's clearly anti and put the kibosh on it ("union is not on the horizon"). Girl it's your job to fight for it so that it happens. Her hostility to players union is contrary to her position as advancing the interest of players — all players. Including the ones who, unlike her, never get to have fancy things like play on show courts. Her job needs her to be player serving, not self-serving. She even sounded like a tourney organizer CEO speaking. It's certainly music to the ears of the suits in the boardrooms.

 

Agree with her on Brisbane — they need to sort out that asymmetrical mess of hosting a team event (that requires lots of center court action) and an important individual event at the same time. It may not be wise or else they need two centre courts. Perhaps they should have better chosen another city for the ATP Cup... (for example Kyrgios's hometown Canberra?)

Canberra is too small to host ATP Cup.

 

How the organisers are laughing, they laugh with all their might

 

But did the spectators who preferred male matches in Brisbane, also laugh? Maybe the problem is that viewers are more interested in men's matches?

 

Do the job, Donna! If women keep being vocal, then someone might hear them and finally do some action.

 

"Vekic serving up fresh ideas"

1. What ideas is she serving?
2. What is fresh about them?

Just talk and talk. Tennis is a product, ATP sells more so they get better schedule and more prize money which is only logical. End of discussion!

 

Just talk and talk. Tennis is a product, ATP sells more so they get better schedule and more prize money which is only logical.

You are right, because sport is actually show business, the one who is more popular earns more. In tennis, men's matches are more popular, so in Brisbane, the audience preferred them.

 

The way the women were treated in Brisbane was disgraceful. ATP Cup needs to leave Brisbane. Or if it stays, stick ATP Cup on Court 1 - and no, I'm not going to call it Stadium Court, which they only renamed to try and fool people into thinking WTA was still on a major court.

 

While she does have a fair point, it's irrational to blame the other organisation for having a better strategic and markreting platform than your own.

Let's not overlook the fact that WTA is being terribly managed at the moment. Last marketing campaign they launched was a huge fiasco, thankfully it was forgettable too. Unless WTA implements some huge changes soon, things will only get worse for female players, that are already in a tough position.

 

Stay on topic.

 

Vekic has Croatian support at her games but is yet to make ties with Melbourne's large Croatian community. She didn't know, for example, there is big Croatian soccer and cultural hub in Melbourne's west.
"I saw Ajla [Tomjlanovic] this morning and she was like, 'Oh my god I ordered UberEats from Cevapi Grill last night' and I was like, 'Oh my God!' "

This surprises me - I thought all the players from the former Yugoslavia would be highly aware of the large diaspora communities we have here.

I mean, we have large communities of every ethnicity in Melbourne, but Serbs/Croats/Bosnians/Macedonians really do have a huge presence here. How has she never noticed it before? We've had huge brawls between Serbian and Croatian fans before :-\