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The DC Open, which wrapped up Sunday, made a significant push to bridge the prize money gap between the ATP and WTA tours.
The tournament’s total WTA purse—for both singles and doubles competition—was $1.28 million, a 39% increase from last year. It’s also the first time the tournament’s total WTA prize money exceeded $1 million.
The boost strengthens the chance the tournament can achieve equal pay between the two sides by 2027, a goal set by the WTA, particularly for combined 1000- and 500-level tournaments. The DC Open is a combined 500-level tournament.
This year’s WTA purse was the first time the women’s purse was more than half of the men’s purse since the tournament started a women’s bracket in 2011. However, this year’s WTA purse was still more than a $1 million short of the ATP’s total prize of nearly $2.4 million, a 14% increase from 2024.
Men’s singles champion Alex de Minaur took home around $420,000—more than twice as much as women’s singles winner Leylah Fernandez, who won about $197,500.
Tournament chairman Mark Ein told Front Office Sports that the double-digit increase for the men’s purse is a sign of the strength of the ATP Tour, which runs on a profit-sharing model.
“There’s a profit-sharing formula with the players, and the tour is doing really well. The tournaments are doing well. So as we do better, players do better. And that was just part of the formula,” Ein said.
There is no profit-sharing model on the WTA’s side, and Ein admitted this year’s purse is “heavily subsidized” because of the disparity in the TV revenues between the two tours. He said, however, that achieving equal prize money by 2027 is possible to give more time for the WTA to bridge the revenue gap.
“The TV revenues—there’s a huge disparity. So this gave us a chance to grow into it and the tour a chance to try to drive more TV revenues to help,” Ein said.
The four tennis Grand Slams have been awarding equal prize money for nearly two decades. Other tournaments have been looking to bridge the gap sooner, including the Charleston Open, a WTA 500 tournament that has committed to equal pay by 2026.
However, the Charleston Open is not a combined tournament, as only women compete in South Carolina. The tournament has not announced its prize money for 2026, but it said it will try to match ATP 500 tournaments that “typically offer more than $2 million.”
—Courtney Fallon contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.
