Queen's chief issues cash warning

Wight (left) has been keen to attract big names to his tournament
Rising appearance fees risk "squeezing the lifeblood" out of tennis, the tournament director of the Stella Artois event at Queen's has claimed.
Ian Wight told the Lawn Tennis Writers' Association annual dinner in London that guarantees being paid to players were getting out of control.

Wright admitted: "We are all guilty of putting self-interest ahead of the commercial future of tennis.

"Player appearance fees have reached levels that beggar belief."

Having persuaded world number two Rafael Nadal to commit to playing at Queen's for two years, Wight confessed he is as guilty as anyone else.

But told his audience of players, writers and tournament organisers that self-interest was threatening the long-term health of the sport.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are killing our game," he said.

"It is the economics of the madhouse that a player can receive more than three times the prize money not for winning a tournament but just for turning up."

ATP tour chairman Etienne de Villiers was in the audience for the speech.

He said the issue of guaranteed payments should be addressed, but he felt Wight's concerns were over-stated.

"We have tracked guarantees as an overall percentage of prize money and they are regularly between 25 and 30%," he said.

"It is impossible to stop the practice in the same way you can't stop people opening the fridge to see what's inside

"We are introducing measures we hope will allow us to understand the practice better.

"Yes, we have to manage our tournaments better to improve the incentives and player commitment.

"Doing that, you will bring the situation involving guarantees back into some kind of equilibrium. What I must emphasise, though, is that this is not a huge crisis."

Interesting article. Shame I did not see it earlier.

Obviously that is something that will be difficult to regulate...and at the end should it be regulated or should we simply abide by the rules of this capitalistic world? Is there a choice after all?

We can see here in this forum made up by real tennis fans that threads with big tennnis names get most viewed and discussed while those outside the top 20 if not the top 2 get hardly an interest. I can only imagine that what we experience here is even emphasised when including a larger definition of tennis fans including those who watch the game once a year in the summer.

I personally woudl be against those fees and this Wight is right! But even if he is right he admits doing wrong so what can be done?

Also, it is not stretching too much imagination that for a tourny organiser who has paid substantial money for his top player, there is a very tempting slippery slope that could also tempt him to pay his top seed opponents to fix matches.

Where are we going?


Looks like these Appearance fees have always been in place (though I can remember Vilas being banished from playing at the end of his career cause they had decided to make them illegal. ...or something like that...) and so far, at least from what we know, it s working fine...but what do we know?

Hmmm, if you look up the ATP on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_o...s_Professionals
You'll see that a grand total of 365 professionals have made $1 million (prize money) since 1973. Neglecting, for now, other sources of income (which only the very top players are going to receive to huge excess) I would say that pro tennis is not actually that well paid. :o

OK to some of you out there $1 million is going to sound a lot - but for a whole career I don't think it's that much (I'll certainly make much more and I'm nowhere near being the 365th best in the UK in my field let alone the World). And if the quote above is true, that appearance money amounts to less than a third of total prize money, then I would say - what's the beef ? I think that the tennis players deserve more. The main (and serious) detraction to appearance money is that it's not visible.