Tennis is slowly coming to Saudi Arabia, and it's putting the WTA in a tough spot both in terms of commitments of its players and optics.
We've had rumours about tennis moving to Saudi Arabia for a while now. It all started with a few exhibitions and events staged in the past, but slowly, the country has inquired about hosting a full big event. They will host the Next Gen ATP Finals this year and likely even more events in the future.
The WTA initially rejected talks about holding any events there due to the questionable stances on women's rights. The country's track record on LGBTQ+ issues is relatively poor as well, and the Tour does have members from that community.
One member of the community, Daria Kasatkina, isn't a fan of playing in Saudi Arabia, even if the payout would be significant. As a WTA Council member, Jessica Pegula was asked about it in New York ahead of the 2023 US Open, and she shared her thoughts.
I think that if you look at a pros and cons list, we'd obviously have to see there be a lot of pros overweighing the cons to feel comfortable going there, whether that's seeing them as a group maybe have to donate money to women's sports or women's rights in Saudi Arabia, to see some sort of change or action going towards helping those causes in their country.
I think that would be something really important that, if we did end up going there, we would want to see. At the same time, yeah, there's obviously a lot of hot topics on that and issues, but at the same time if we can go there and create change, that's also a great thing.
Pegula never dismissed playing in Saudi Arabia, advocating an educated approach. She's been a vocal advocate for more prize money for women's players, and that's something Saudi Arabia could offer. From that point of view, going there is rather attractive to many players.
I think it's just going to have to be the right arrangement and we're going to have to know if we go there, okay, well, we want to be making a change, and you need to help us do that. If that was the case, I think unfortunately a lot of places don't pay women a lot of money, and it's unfortunate that a lot of women's sports, like we don't have the luxury to say no to some things.
Again, I think if the money was right and the arrangement was something that we could get behind where we could go and create change, then I would be okay playing there. But, yeah, I mean, we'll see. Those are all factors that it depends on for me. We'll just have to see how it works out.
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