Four professional tennis players earned at least $10 million in 2023, making it a record-breaking year for earnings. That has only
occurred three other times, even after accounting for inflation: in 2012, 2015, and 2019.
The top four earnings were all male. Novak Djokovic, who earned just less than $16 million, was in the lead. After a tight second place
with $15.2 million went to 20-year-old Carlos Alcaraz, followed by former U.S. Open champion Daniil Medvedev with $11.5 million and
the rising Italian Jannik Sinner with $10.5 million in a breakthrough year.
Iga Swiatek, the most wealthy woman in history, almost missed the deadline despite taking home $9.9 million in prizes, which is nearly
precisely what she made the year before. After making it to the U.S. Open final, Aryna Sabalenka momentarily held the top spot in the
global rankings and earned $8.2 million in prize money.
Due to her domination last year, Swiatek came very close to being the first female tennis player to earn the highest salary in a single
season since 2003. But this year, there was a worse gender wage discrepancy in the elite division of the sport. In 2023, the combined
earnings of the top 10 male players amounted to $84.6 million, which is 62% higher than the $52.1 million received by their female
counterparts. Since equal pay was instituted by all four majors in 2007, this difference has never been greater.
Given that seven of the top ten highest-paid female athletes in 2023 were tennis players, the sport remains an anomaly in terms of the
potential earnings for women competing at the professional level. However, there is still a lot of work to be done in order to carry out the
WTA’s objective, which was adopted last summer, to have equal pay across the tennis season by 2033.
In terms of tennis prize money for the year, four women made the top ten. On the court, twenty-one men and fifteen women made at least
$2 million.
The top players in the game receive additional revenues from ATP bonus pools, which are a major source of income for male tennis stars.
Even though the WTA had a bonus pool in the past, it was eliminated in 2020.
