Article by Maria Olteanu – Published on Wednesday, 20 May 2026, 19:41 / Updated on Wednesday, 20 May 2026 19:41
The conflict between the world's best tennis players and the Grand Slam tournaments is intensifying, which is why the players plan to reduce their media activities ahead of the second Grand Slam of 2026, Roland Garros, which runs from May 17 to June 7 on the clay in Paris.
According to international media, the players selected to participate in the press conferences on Friday, May 22, at Roland Garros will leave them after 15 minutes. This gesture symbolizes the fact that the Grand Slam tournaments allocate, on average, only 15% of their income to the prize pool.
The rest of the main draw players will refuse to give further interviews to the tournament's main media partners who hold the broadcast rights, namely TNT Sports and Eurosport.
Players continue to protest at Roland Garros
A source close to the players says that after Roland Garros confirmed this month that this year's prize pool would be €61.7m, locker room discussions led to the decision to respond in Paris with a strategy described as “working strictly according to the rules”, whereby off-court activities will be reduced to an absolute minimum.
The players have reportedly studied the tournament's rules and concluded that they will not be penalized as long as they fulfill their contractual obligations, which include short interviews with rights holders immediately after each match, according to sportal.blic.rs.
The top 20 players, including Novak Djokovic, Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff, are in contention at all four Grand Slam tournaments. They feel they are getting an insufficient share of the ever-increasing tournament revenue.
The prize fund of the French Open has increased this year by 9.5% compared to the previous year, so the men's and women's winners will each receive 2.8 million euros.
But players are unhappy because that increase is much more modest when viewed as a percentage of the tournament's total revenue. Although Roland Garros revenues increased last year by 14% (to 395 million euros), the prize fund increased by only 5.4%, thus reducing the players' share of the revenues to 14.3%.
Since the dispute became public last year, players have been calling for the Grand Slam tournaments to match the percentage with the ATP and WTA circuits, which pay players a 22 percent share of their earnings.
