I am a tennis aficionado. I follow tennis year-round, and each tournament has a special place for me – except for one.
The WTA Finals, an elite competition open exclusively to the top eight female singles and doubles players, started on November 1st. It is described as the ‘crown jewel’ of the tennis season. The showpiece. Yet I feel a gnawing sense of discomfort as this tournament proceeds.
For the second year, the WTA Finals is being held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as part of a three-year contract. Hosting the WTA Finals is part of Saudi Arabia’s efforts to establish a foothold in tennis in order to rehabilitate its global image. The lucrative sums Saudi Arabia has offered to host the Finals have proved too tempting to resist for the WTA, which is under pressure to deliver on its pledge to achieve equal prize money for men and women by 2029. Whilst there is equal prize money at the four Grand Slams, pay equity is far away on the regular tour. The Italian Open, for instance, awards women 75% of the total prize money that the men receive. WTA prize money this year was a record $249 million – a 13% increase on 2024. Beneath this apparent success story lies the troubling reality that WTA prize money lags far behind the ATP tour, which offered $348 million in prize money this year. At the WTA Finals, however, prize money will be a record $15.5 million, a staggering sum which is on par with the money on offer at the ATP Finals in Turin.
Aside from the financial considerations, the WTA leadership has also argued that a move to Saudi Arabia could help encourage women’s sports in Saudi Arabia and inspire future generations. ‘I’m a huge believer in engagement,’ Billie Jean King said in 2023, as talks regarding holding the WTA Finals in Riyadh were ongoing. ‘I don’t think you can change unless you engage.’ But it is naïve to think that hosting a tennis tournament will change the situation for women and girls in Saudi Arabia. By holding the WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia, the WTA won’t only fail to bring about change – it will be complicit in Saudi sportswashing.
It is true that some positive changes have occurred in Saudi Arabia. Women can now obtain passports without male approval and there are new protections against employment discrimination. Women can drive.
This veneer of liberalisation cannot conceal the reality that Saudi Arabia continues to imprison, interrogate, and torture women’s rights activists. The country is ranked 132nd out of 148 countries on the 2025 Global Gender Gap index. The liberalisation laws passed by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, touted as ‘progressive’, actually enshrine male guardianship over women, and include provisions which facilitate domestic violence and sexual abuse in marriage. A new law requires women to obtain a male guardian’s permission to marry, and fathers remain the default guardians of their children.
The Saudi human rights record is not just dubious when it comes to women’s rights. Homosexuality is illegal and can carry the death sentence. Elsewhere, the Saudis are part of a coalition conducting a military campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, including strikes which have killed thousands of civilians. Saudi border guards have killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who have tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border.
Many have asked how tennis can hold a prestigious event in a country with such a persistently atrocious human rights record. Holding the WTA Finals in Riyadh legitimises the actions of the Saudi regime and does a disservice to the hundreds of women’s rights activists imprisoned in the pursuit of equality. It’s also true that the WTA can and has relied on other sources of revenue, including broadcast rights, sponsorship deals and profits from the grand slams.
The WTA was founded in 1973 by Billie Jean King, with a commitment to advancing women’s equality and opportunity. The decision to succumb to Saudi deep pockets is one sorely at odds with the values on which it was founded. Let’s hope this decision is a short-term misstep, and not the start of a new, worrying status quo.
