Coronavirus crisis requires, the Roland-Garros tournament will tighten its belt this year.
Anticipating a shortfall, the French Tennis Federation has lowered the overall endowment.
This will therefore drop from 42.7 to 38 million euros for the Parisian tournament which began on Sunday (September 27-October 11).
The winners of the tournament will be directly impacted by this tightening of the screws with a reduction in their check of about 30%.
Last year, Rafael Nadal and Ashleigh Barty each raised a nest egg of € 2.3 million.
The two future winners will receive a reward of 1.6 million euros in a fortnight.
Increasing allocation for qualifications
In a difficult context and to show their solidarity with the players of the circuit who do not support the peaks of the ATP or the WTA and whose income is more modest, the management of the tournament has decided to inflate the rewards of the first round.
While elimination from the start of the main tournament made it possible to touch 46,000 euros last season, 60,000 euros will swell the pot of losers.
This is the only increase for the main draw.
All other wins in subsequent rounds are revised downwards.
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The tournament also considered qualifying players with an increase of 27%.
Thus, a defeated player or player will receive 7,000 euros, 12,250 euros in the second round of qualifying and in the third round, 24,000 euros.
Crumbling ticket sales
These measures come in an extremely difficult context for the French Tennis Federation.
With the gauge set at 1,000 spectators per day, ticketing revenues will be almost zero, whereas they have constituted around 20% of the event's budget in recent years.
Fortunately, the event's business model, which relies heavily on TV rights (36% of revenue) as well as strong partnerships, will help weather the storm.
The FFT, whose revenues are mainly based on the French Open (260 M € out of an overall budget of 330 M €) in 2019 will not escape savings plans in the months and years to come.
Especially after the stadium renovations undertaken for several years (380 million euros).
The 2020 endowments of the Roland-Garros tournament:
Winner: 1.6 million euros (2.3 million euros in 2019, a decrease of 30.43%)
Finalist: 850,500 euros (1.18 million d 'euros in 2019, i.e. a decrease of 27.92%)
1/2 final: 425,250 euros (590,000 euros in 2019, i.e. a decrease of 27.92%)
1/4 final: 283,500 euros (415,000 euros in 2019, i.e. a decrease of 31.69%)
8th final: 189,000 euros (243,000 euros in 2019, i.e. a decrease of 22.22%)
3rd round: 126,000 euros (143,000 euros in 2019, i.e. a decrease from 11.89%)
2nd round: 84,000 euros (87,000 euros in 2019,
i.e.
a decrease of 3.45%)
1st round: 46,000 euros (46,000 euros in 2019, i.e. an increase of 30.43%)
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