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Wimbledon’s hidden scandal: the 4,411% pay gap for disabled players

A social media user has highlighted the 4411.76% pay disparity for disabled and non-disabled tennis players at Wimbledon.

On Monday 30 June, the tournament kicked off – followed by the start of Disability Pride Month on 1 July.

Stephen Lightbrown highlighted the shocking pay disparity on his Instagram story.

Wimbledon: £3m Vs £68k

The winners of both the men’s and women’s Wimbledon singles tournaments walk away with £3m. Meanwhile, the winners of the wheelchair singles take home a mere £68,000. That is 4411.76% more.

Similarly, if you win just the first round of the men’s or women’s singles, you walk away with £66k. That is nearly the same as the whole prize pot for the disability singles.

To get even a penny in the equivalent wheelchair event, you have to make the quarter-finals.

Additionally, the men’s and women’s doubles winners get £660k between them – that’s £330k each. The wheelchair doubles, though? £30k, between them. Or £15k each. That is 2100% more

The total Wimbledon prize pot for 2025 is £52m. Of that, only £1.677m is designated for the disability rounds. A pathetic 3.225%.

For a sport that no doubt requires specialist equipment, adapted transportation and any other disability related costs that might crop up, this is nothing short of ableism.

Additionally, disabled athletes no doubt have to overcome far more obstacles than their non-disabled peers.

At other Grand Slam tennis events, the figures are similar. This year’s Australian Open gave wheelchair singles winners around 109,000 AUD, while the non-disabled singles winners won nearly 3m AUD.

A wider issue

The disparity in prize money at Wimbledon highlights the much bigger issue of pay in disability sports more generally.

Back in 2020, Kelly Gallagher, a Winter Paralympic gold medalist, discussed the issue with the BBC. She highlighted that there was “no real prize money” and the “lack of sponsorship”. Clearly, not much has changed since then.

Hannah Cockroft, a five-time Paralympic gold medallist, also drew attention to the issue in 2019, after she went unbeaten for a whole season and still could not get a sponsor.

In 2018, we finished second, winning a silver medal. She lost four sponsors because she didn’t win gold.

A non-disabled athlete would not face such drastic consequences for coming in second.

It’s safe to say that disability sports have a long way to go. Even outside of sport, the Walters Report found that only a third of disabled people earn over the national average of £30,000, compared to half of the wider population. However, there are not many jobs like sport, where the potential prize money for non-disabled athletes is so huge, and in comparison, disabled athletes go home with crumbs.

Feature image via Wimbledon/YouTube

By HG

This post was originally published on Canary.