ITF boosts prize money to ease costs for lower-ranked tennis players

For many aspiring professionals, the dream begins in a van, not a private suite. Billy Harris said he spent three and a half years traveling around Europe and sleeping in his van, with a bed in the back and even a stringing machine inside so he could restring his racquets on the road.

His story captures the economics of the ITF World Tennis Tour, the entry-level and mid-level pathway between junior tennis and the elite game. The men’s tour stages about 600 tournaments in 70 countries, with prize money split into two tiers, $15,000 and $30,000. The women’s tour runs about 600 tournaments in 65 countries across W15, W35, W50, W75 and W100 events. The International Tennis Federation says the structure is meant to target prize money where it can reduce costs and help more players make a living.

That promise is still being tested by the scale of the sport’s financial demands. In 2024, 10,979 players competed in 1,200 ITF World Tennis Tour tournaments, with 598 men’s and 602 women’s events staged across 72 countries. The ITF said women’s events paid out a record $17.9 million in prize money that year, while men’s events had a record $11.3 million on offer.

The governing body is pushing more money into the system. It said $35.3 million will be on offer across more than 1,100 tournaments in 2025, a 20 percent increase from the $29.4 million available in 2024. The ITF said the increase is intended to ease difficult financial conditions and, for women, reduce hotel costs. On the men’s side, the ATP has also moved to strengthen the pathway, announcing record ATP Challenger Tour prize money of $28.5 million for 2025, up $6.2 million from the previous year and 135 percent since 2022.

Andrea Gaudenzi, the ATP chairman, said the reforms are meant to create a sustainable player pathway to the ATP Tour and help more players make a living from tennis. That goal reflects the hard arithmetic facing the sport’s middle class, where plane tickets, hotels, food, coaching and stringing can swallow a week’s earnings before ranking points turn into real security.

Harris eventually broke through, becoming Great Britain’s top men’s singles player at the United Cup and reaching a career-high world No. 101 in September 2024. His rise, and the years it took to get there, underline the same truth across the lower tiers: talent opens the door, but financial backing often decides who gets to keep walking through it.