Wimbledon and beyond: the pay gap facing tennis players with disability

At Wimbledon, the men’s and women’s singles champions each walk away with millions. In 2024, for example, the singles winners earned about £2.7 million each. By comparison, the wheelchair singles champions took home just £65,000 — more than 40 times less. This gap has actually grown in absolute terms over recent years, despite modest increases in the wheelchair prize pool.

The same disparity plays out at other Grand Slam events, too. The Australian Open in 2025 offered wheelchair singles champions around $109,000 Australian dollars, while singles — with the use of their legs — winners earned nearly three million AUD. Overall, prize money for wheelchair draws often sits at just a few percent of the total purse.

It’s not just prize money, either. Sponsorships and endorsement deals for tennis players with disability — and Paralympians more broadly — are still a fraction of what their counterparts command. While household names like Djokovic, Osaka or Nadal can earn 10s of millions in sponsorships each year, only a handful of athletes with disability worldwide have secured big brand deals. In fact, many Paralympians went years without any sponsors at all — until very recently, when brands like Visa and Toyota started adding more athletes with disability to their rosters. Even so, these deals remain far smaller than those given to stars without disability.

A pattern across other sports

Tennis is far from the only example; in the Paralympic movement, athletes have historically received significantly fewer medal bonuses compared to their Olympic counterparts. Australia, for instance, only introduced equal medal payments for Paralympic medalists in 2021 — prior to that, they received nothing, while Olympians received thousands per medal. The United States made a similar change a few years earlier, but in many countries, these gaps persist.

Team sports show the same trend. Wheelchair basketball has a devoted following, but offers no big paydays — most top players juggle training with day jobs. Meanwhile, the National Basketball Association players sign multi-million-dollar contracts. In amputee football/soccer, players often train at elite levels but earn next to nothing, relying on side gigs to make ends meet.

Even in Para-athletics and marathon racing, where wheelchair racers sometimes earn equal pay in iconic events, like the New York or London Marathons, most other competitions offer minimal prize money compared to the respective track and field events.

A growing audience, but slow progress

The good news is that more people are watching and supporting disability sport than ever before. Global Paralympic broadcasts are growing year on year, with more than 1.6 billion video views across IPC digital channels in 2024, while the number of internet searches broke the one billion barrier for the first time. More brands are stepping up, too, adding athletes with disability to major campaigns and Paralympic sponsorships.

Yet, despite this momentum, the financial gap remains stark. Disability sports are still significantly underfunded compared to their mainstream counterparts and many elite athletes continue to train and compete without the rewards or security that should accompany their success.

As Wimbledon serves up another year of thrilling matches, it’s worth asking: when will the pay on offer for the world’s top players with disability match the skill, dedication and audience they bring to the court?

What do you think of the pay gap and will you be tuning into Wimbledon this year? Let the team at Talking Disability know and subscribe to the newsletter for more information, news and industry updates.

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