All England Club gifts £10m to world's top players despite Wimbledon cancellation

The world’s leading tennis players might be suffering from a shortage of tournament earnings, but the All England Club stepped up on Friday with a £10million payout that should help cover any unpaid bills.

The money is some way short of what would normally be on offer at Wimbledon – which supplied a £38m prize-money pool in 2019 – but it is still a generous contribution from an event that announced its cancellation all the way back on April 1.

The AELTC’s pandemic insurance will cover the cost of this latest contribution to the wider game, which comes on top of an earlier relief effort shared by all seven of tennis’s stakeholders.

Up to 620 players will receive a payment, across five categories: singles players (£25,000 each), singles qualifiers (£12,500), doubles players (£6,250), wheelchair players (£6,000) and quad wheelchair players (£5,000).

“We know these months of uncertainty have been very worrying,” said Wimbledon’s outgoing chief executive Richard Lewis in a statement. “We are pleased that our insurance policy has allowed us to recognise the impact of the cancellation on the players and that we are now in a position to offer this payment as a reward for the hard work they have invested in building their ranking to a point where they would have gained direct entry into The Championships 2020.”

The news was well received among the tennis community. Switzerland’s world No 8 Belinda Bencic said:

Paula Badosa, the world No 94 from Spain, posted a similar comment. “Such a nice gesture on these tough moments Wimbledon. Means the world for us, thank you.”

In the same announcement, the All England Club said that they would also be funding tennis officials who would have worked at the tournament, and that the ATP rankings would no longer be adjusted according to grass-court form for future Wimbledon seedings. Unadjusted world rankings were already being used in the women’s draw.

Meanwhile, a briefing note from the Tennis Integrity Unit stressed that the suspension of the official tours has not eliminated betting corruption from the game. The TIU said that suspicious betting patterns had been identified around 24 matches played in the multifarious exhibition tournaments that have sprung up around the world, and added that “corruptors remain active, and are likely to increase their focus on the sport when professional tennis resumes in August. “