TheWomen's Tennis Association (WTA) is the principal organizing body ofwomen's professional tennis. The association governs theWTA Tour, which is the worldwide professional tennis tour for women, and was founded to create a better future for women's tennis. The WTA's corporate headquarters are inSt. Petersburg, Florida, with its European headquarters inLondon and its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Beijing.[1]
The Women's Tennis Association was founded in June 1973 byBillie Jean King, and traces its origins to the inauguralVirginia Slims tournament, arranged byGladys Heldman, sponsored byJoe Cullman, CEO of Philip Morris, and held on 23 September 1970 at the Houston Racquet Club inHouston, Texas.Rosie Casals won this first event.
Tennis'sOpen Era, in which professional players were allowed to compete alongside amateurs, began in 1968. The first Open Tournament was theBritish Hard Court Championships inBournemouth. Later that year at the first Open Wimbledon, the prize fund difference was 2.5:1 in favor of men. Billie Jean King, a high ranking tennis player in the late 1960s who won several titles, won £750 for taking the title, whilstRod Laver won £2,000.[2] The total prize pool of both competitions were £14,800 and £5,680 for men and women, respectively. The tournaments that did not want to provide prize money eventually faded out of the calendar, including the US Eastern Grass Court circuit with stops atMerion Cricket Club andEssex county club.
The women were being squeezed financially because we had no control in a male-dominated sport. Men owned, ran and promoted the tournaments, and because many of them were former players themselves, their sympathies lay with the male players, who argued vociferously that most of the money should be theirs.
—King and Starr on the gender pay gap within tennis, from their book "We Have Come a Long Way" (1988)[3]
There were two professional tennis circuits in existence at the start of the Open Era:World Championship Tennis (WCT), which was for men only, and theNational Tennis League (NTL).Ann Jones,Rosie Casals,Françoise Dürr, and Billie Jean King joined the NTL. King was paid $40,000 a year, Jones was paid $25,000, and Casals and Durr were paid $20,000 each.[4] The group played established tournaments, such as the US Open and Wimbledon, and also organised their own tournaments, playing in the South of France for two months. TheInternational Tennis Federation (ITF) then imposed several sanctions on the group. Women were not allowed to play in theWightman Cup in 1968 and 1969 and theUSLTA refused to include Casals and King in their rankings for those years. In 1969, ratios of 5:1 in terms of pay between men and women were common at smaller tournaments. By 1970, these figures had increased to up to 12:1. TheInternational Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) had begun dropping several women's competitions from the tournaments it presided over, having sanctioned 15 men-only tournaments in 1970, all of which had previously been combined events.[5]
Several female players contactedGladys Heldman, publisher ofWorld Tennis Magazine, and stated that they wanted to boycott the event. Although Heldman advised against it, she did help them put together their own tournament in Houston which would not take place until after the US Open. The1970 Houston Women's Invitation for nine women players was formed.[7][8][9] Heldman was friends with Joseph Cullman, CEO and chairman of Phillip Morris, who secured the new tournament. The tournament was a success and later sponsored byVirginia Slims in 1971.[6]
The WTA was founded at a meeting organised by Billie Jean King, a week before the1973 Wimbledon Championships, as a direct response to the formation of theAssociation of Tennis Professionals a year prior. This meeting was held at Gloucester Hotel in London and featured 70 other female players, where King was named the first president of the organisation.[4] In 1975, the WTA increased its financial stature by signing a television broadcast contract withCBS, the first in the WTA's history.[7][10]
Television, streaming, and social media would help connect the sport of tennis with more people around the world.
In 1976,Colgate assumed sponsorship of the circuit from April to November, withAvon replacing Virginia Slims as the sponsor of the winter circuit the following year.[8][7] TheColgate Series—renamed theToyota Series in 1981—included tournaments in all parts of the world, whereas the Avon sponsored events took place solely in the US. The two circuits merged at the beginning of the1983 season, when Virginia Slims returned to take full sponsorship rights of the WTA Tour. Every tournament under the administration of the WTA became part of theVirginia Slims World Championship Series, before becoming theWTA World Tour in 1995 after the WTA Players Association merged with the Women's Tennis Council.[8][7]
In 1977, women's tennis was the first professional sport opened to transgender women. The New York Supreme Court ruled in favour ofRenée Richards, a player who underwent male-to-femalesex reassignment surgery. Eligibility of transgender players is officially regulated under the current WTA official rulebook.[11]
Since 2012 (number of events varies each year; in 2018 there were ten tournaments: four in United States, two in China and one each in Croatia, France, India and Taiwan), with prize money for the four events in United States at US$150,000 and at the other events at around US$125,000.
Ranking points are also available at tournaments on theITF Women's Circuit organized by theInternational Tennis Federation, which comprises several hundred tournaments each year with prize funds ranging from US$15,000 to US$100,000.
American sports entrepreneur Jerry Diamond (1928–1996) served as executive director of the women's association from 1974 to 1985. He was instrumental in negotiating business deals with Avon, Colgate-Palmolive, and Toyota, and worked out the deal that made Virginia Slims the titular sponsor of the WTA tour.[12]
Larry Scott became chairman and CEO of the WTA on 16 April 2003.[13] While at the WTA, Scott put together the largestsponsorship in the history of women's sports, a six-year, $88 million sponsorship deal withSony Ericsson.[13][14][15] On 24 March 2009, Scott announced that he was resigning as WTA chief to take up a new position as the commissioner of thePac-10 Conference, on 1 July 2009.[14][15][16]
Scott pointed toKorn Ferry to headhunt his replacement but "with no decision made"[17] on 13 July 2009, WTA Tour announced the appointment of Stacey Allaster, the Tour's president since 2006, as the new chairman and CEO of the WTA. Allaster was named as one of the "Most Powerful Women in Sports" by Forbes Magazine and led the WTA through significant growth and under her leadership, she secured a media agreement that would maximise fan exposure to women's tennis globally.[8][7] During her time with the WTA, she generated an estimated $1 billion in diversified contract revenues, built the brand globally, and was a strong advocate for gender equality. She announced her retirement as chief executive of the WTA on 22 September 2015 citing a personal change in priorities.[18]
On 5 October 2015,Steve Simon, the Tournament Director of theBNP Paribas Open, was announced to succeed Stacey as the new WTA chairman and CEO.[19]
In December 2021, followingPeng Shuai'sdisappearance by the Chinese government, the WTA under Steve Simon suspended its operations in China and Hong Kong.[20] The boycott was lifted in 2023 after 16 months, citing financial losses due to the suspension of operations in China as well as theCOVID-19 pandemic.[21]
In March 2022, medical technology firmHologic reached an agreement to become title sponsor and "official health partner" of the WTA Tour, marking its first title sponsorship agreement since the expiration of the previous Sony Ericsson deal.[22]
On 28 October 2025, it was announced thatValerie Camillo had been chosen to be the next chairperson, taking over from the retiring Steve Simon on 17 November of that year.[23]
The Players' Council is a group or sub-committee under the WTA board of directors, consisting of eight selected players on the tour that advocate player interest, handles grievances, changes in the tennis schedule and other concerns.
When Avon began sponsoring the winter circuit in 1976, the largest prize fund offered for a single tournament was $100,000—for theAvon Championships.In 1984, The Australian Open joined the US Open in offering women equal prize money, but temporarily did not between 1996 and 2000. After a 30-year campaign, 2007 marked the historic achievement of equal prize money at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. This meant all four major tournaments offered parity. In 1973, the US Open tennis tournament became the first Grand Slam tournament to award the same prize money for women as men. The Australian Open would become the second Grand Slam offering equal prize money following suit in 1985 although the tournament awarded men more money from 1996 to 2000 before equal prize money returned in 2001. The French Open offered equal prize money for champions in 2006. In 2007 both Wimbledon and the French Open both offered equal prize money.[25][26]
As the sport has grown over the years, more sponsorships help to keep the sport viable.
The WTA circuit continued to expand during these years. In 1971, King became the first female athlete to surpass $100,000 in earnings for a single year.[8][7][27]Chris Evert became the first female athlete to win over $1,000,000 in career earnings in 1976. By 1980, over 250 women were playing professionally, and the circuit consisted of 47 global events, offering a total of $7.2 million in prize money. These increased financial opportunities allowed for groundbreaking developments not only in tennis, but across women's sports.
In 1982,Martina Navratilova became the first to win over $1,000,000 in a single year. Navratilova's single year earnings exceeded $2 million in 1984. In 1997,Martina Hingis became the first to earn over $3 million during a single year. In 2003,Kim Clijsters surpassed $4 million in earnings for a single year. In 2006,Venus Williams and the WTA pushed for equal prize money at both the French Open andWimbledon. Both of theseGrand Slam events relented in 2007 and awarded equal money for the first time. This enabledJustine Henin, who won the French Open in 2007, to earn over $5 million that year, becoming the first woman in sports to do this.[28] In 2009,Serena Williams went over the six million mark by earning over $6.5 million in a single year. Then in 2012 both Serena Williams andVictoria Azarenka became the first players to exceed $7 million in prize money in a single season. In 2013 Serena Williams went over the twelve million dollar mark, winning $12,385,572 in a single year.
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