Australian Open Begins With Record Prize Money—and Doping Drama

The 2025 tennis calendar is off and running with this weekend’s start of the Australian Open, the first major of the year, featuring another record purse that showcases further the sharp escalation in the sport’s player compensation.

The tournament features an event-record total purse of $96.5 million in Australian dollars (more than $59 million in U.S. currency), up by 12% from a year ago, and more than twice the level of a decade ago. The latest figure extends the trend of double-digit-percentage increases seen annually across the four majors, most recently with the 2024 US Open that set a tennis record with a $75 million purse. Australian Open singles champions will each receive $3.5 million in Australian dollars ($2.15 million U.S.), up more than 11%.

As was the case in 2024, the Australian Open will help set the financial tone in tennis for the rest of the year, though a weakening of the country’s dollar in recent months does hamper players’ conversion to their native currencies somewhat. 

Doping Chatter

The tournament’s defending champions, Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka (who also won in 2023), each return to Melbourne as the sport’s current No. 1 players, and they are betting favorites to prevail again—lending a clear sense of competitive superiority for those top talents. 

The dominant storyline for the Australian Open at the outset, however, surrounds doping cases in the sport, particularly a still-open one for Sinner and another for Iga Świątek, currently the women’s No. 2 player in the world. 

In Sinner’s case, he tested positive last year for trace amounts of the anabolic steroid clostebol, initially considered to be an accidental result of contact with a trainer who used the substance. The World Anti-Doping Agency is appealing Sinner’s initial exoneration by the International Tennis Integrity Agency, and a final ruling is expected after the Australian Open.

Świątek, meanwhile, accepted a one-month suspension after testing positive for TMZ, a banned heart medication she said she was taking for jet lag and sleep-related issues. After initially missing three late-season events last fall for what was described as “personal reasons,” the suspension ultimately became public.

“We started, yeah, with ‘personal issues’ because I also needed time to figure everything out,” she said. 

The continued swirl of doping-related scrutiny and suspicion, meanwhile, continues to loom large over the sport, and this event in particular. Emma Raducanu said she recently left an allergic reaction to insect bites untreated for fear of triggering a positive doping test.

“I was just left there with my swollen ankle and hand,” Raducanu said. “I’m just, ‘I’m going to tough it out,’ because I don’t want to risk it.”