Nick Kyrgios has reignited the debate on revenue sharing in the world of tennis. A very sensitive topic that always generates in-depth discussions.

Novak Djokovic, after the match won against Gael Monfils at the Brisbane International, was questioned on the subject and expressed his point of view by developing a very long speech.

The Serbian champion explained that tennis is a global sport and that players still have to deal with different rules and tax systems. The question then shifted to how each tournament manages the prize money to be made available. Only a small part, especially if you think about other sports, of the total revenue is destined to the protagonists of the Tour.

“It’s a fact. It’s not my opinion. And what Nick says is true. In the most famous American sports – NBA, NHL, NFL – the institutions take 50% of the cake, sometimes a little more, sometimes less. In our sport the percentages are much lower. Let me explain. Ours is a different sport, it’s international and we play it all over the world. We are subject to different rules and laws of different countries that have their own rules and taxation systems.

And then each tournament manages the division of the prize money itself. We also have the ATP, the WTA, the Grand Slams: all separate entities that can do what they want. It’s a very fragmented reality and it’s not easy to try to put everyone in the same room and say let’s agree on a certain percentage. Also because the revenue of an ATP250 is very different from that of a Slam.

I was president of the Players’ Council and I’ve been part of it for ten years and I know exactly how the system works: and unfortunately it’s not the players who make the decisions on the most important issues. The problem in the ATP structure is that as players we only have 50% of the organization and there have been a lot of conflicts of interest between players and tournaments in the past years,” Nole analyzed with his usual honesty.

Djokovic’s PTPA aims to change things to give tennis players a central role in these types of decisions.

“We want something different. We are all part of the same system and we can’t do without each other, yet we often find ourselves in conflict with each other. We want more money, and they probably don’t want to give it to us when we discuss prize money with them, which hides a lot of other details and is not easy to resolve. Ultimately, what Nick said is true: if you look at the percentage that players get from the overall revenue of the sport, it is much lower than most other global sports, especially American