To cap off Women in Sport Week, Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) president Micky Lawler opens up about equal prize money, the challenge of growing the profile of female athletes, and offers advice on the commercial opportunity in women’s sport.

A little over a year and a half ago something significant happened in the world of sport.

It was around that time - January 2018, to be precise - that the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) revealed that its season-crowning WTA Finals would be leaving Singapore at the end of the year to take up a decade-long hosting deal with the Chinese city of Shenzhen. An eye-catching move, for certain, but it was not necessarily the relocation that grabbed the attention of most.

Perhaps more intriguing was that the WTA simultaneously confirmed that the tournament’s prize money would be doubled from US$7 million to US$14 million as of 2019, with this year’s singles winner taking home a record-breaking US$4.75 million. That the most lucrative prize in the history of professional tennis will be won in November by a woman is not something that went unnoticed by the players on the men’s ATP Tour, who at their equivalent season-ending event this year in London will be playing for a pot worth US$5 million less.

Unsurprisingly, by the end of 2018, rumours were already starting to surface that the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) was preparing to end its 12-year love affair with the British capital’s O2 Arena in favour of a bigger hosting contract with Turin. When the ATP Finals’ switch to the Italian city was officially confirmed in April, the BBC’s tennis correspondent Russell Fuller noted that the 50 per cent increase in prize money would put the men on a par with the women.

“That was a big statement for the WTA,” begins Micky Lawler, the Dutch-born president of the world’s premier women’s tennis circuit. “That [increase in prize money] contributed a lot to our growth, and it has pushed the ATP in relooking at their own structure in terms of the finals.

The official handover ceremony ahead of the WTA Finals' relocation from Singapore to Shenzhen

“People still say, ‘well there is still a long way for you guys to go’, and yes there is a long way to go, but the business model is not the same. We have instances where, like in China, we have bigger businesses and somewhere else we have a smaller business, and all in all the ATP also has more tournaments than we do.

“We push each other, and I think that it’s socially very important to have equal prize money where it’s the same tournament, same stage, same level, same points, same everything.”

In tennis, and of course the wider world of sport, the shoe has traditionally been on the other foot. It was not until 2007 that Wimbledon became the last of the four Grand Slams to offer equal prize money, some 34 years after Billie Jean King’s threat to boycott the US Open roused her home tournament to be the first to commit to pay parity for men and women.

The equal pay debate has arguably garnered more momentum in tennis than any other sport, but the growing public interest in female athletes is making it a relevant issue for an increasing number of governing and organising bodies. US Soccer, for one, finds itself embroiled in a bitter lawsuit with its own women’s national team, while Fifa, the sport’s global governing body, came under scrutiny this summer over the gulf in prize money on offer between the men’s and women’s World Cups.

Tennis, though, is one of few that has taken significant strides towards equalising renumeration.

“The big difference between tennis and other sports is that the men and the women compete on the same stage and at the same time,” says Lawler, speaking to SportsPro in June ahead of Simona Halep’s triumph at Wimbledon, where the Romanian claimed a winner’s cheque worth UK£2.35 million. “I think the Grand Slams grew and grew because a fan would have a chance to come to a tournament, see both female and male players, and it was an event - it’s the place to be, they’re so well done and they’re so well produced.

“I think we’ve benefitted greatly from playing on the same stage and I think the men have as well. It’s fine to have different products for different marketplaces, totally natural, but when we’re together it’s one stage, one game.”

Simona Halep took home UK£2.35 million for winning Wimbledon in July

When that stage becomes separate, however, the story remains somewhat different. According to a report in The Guardian, 2018 saw 71 of the world’s top 100 male players earn more than female tennis stars of the same ranking. Lawler, though, is quick to point out that the current disparity between the athletes on the two tours is more than just an issue of gender.

“There are a few reasons,” she begins. “The size of the market is important, what the tournament’s position is overall in terms of events in that marketplace. Then superstars drive events, so the ATP has been tremendously fortunate in having a great class of superstars. The WTA has as well, but you need to build the profile of these champions, and that takes time.

“If you want to rely on the base of your tennis fans, that’s great because that’s a consistent fan, but you need to grow that fanbase and to do that you need to cast a net that goes beyond the tennis fan and into the public that’s going to be drawn to a superstar and then learn to love the sport.

I think that it’s socially very important to have equal prize money where it’s the same tournament, same stage, same level, same points, same everything.

“It’s a process, and then the events themselves also need time for growth, they need investment, and we’ve got some amazing events. For example, the Porsche Grand Prix in Stuttgart has fantastic audience numbers that can rival any tournament on the ATP Tour - and I hate to say rival because one of our goals is to work closer and closer and bring the sport together.”

And while an imbalance might persist outside of the majors, the WTA continues to set a benchmark for women’s sport. Industry outlet Forbes recently estimated that the top ten highest-paid female athletes are all tennis players, with 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams leading the way on US$29.2 million, closely followed by Japanese star Naomi Osaka.

Most of Williams’ earnings come from her lucrative sponsorship deals – Osaka, with US$8.3 million, won almost double in prize money – and Lawler believes that the WTA at large is about to benefit from the appetite of brands looking to associate themselves with women’s sport.

“The WTA has played a big part in setting that stage,” she says, “and now there is a lot of interest because most major brands have fundamental goals in involving more women, in recognising the fact that women have such tremendous purchasing power in the marketplace, and in taking that conversation to the next level. So if you are talking about brand alignment, there is a lot of brand alignment with several big brands.”

Forbes ranked Serena Williams (right) and Naomi Osaka as the top two highest-paid female athletes for 2019

Lawler, who in 1988 became one of the first female agents in the industry after making her move into sport two years earlier, describes the WTA as being at a “pivotal point” in its history – especially given that brands looking to bet big on female athletes might be more likely to side with a more established organisation in what is still an emerging market.

Armed with more than 30 years of experience at global management and marketing agency Octagon, Lawler speaks with a calming authority as she outlines what both sponsors and rights holders should be aiming to achieve from commercial partnerships in women’s sport.

“I think this momentum is taking place simultaneous to other major transformations in business and in the way brands communicate,” she declares. “I think the key is in not just accepting a cheque to reinvest in the sport, but to work together with brands to form alignment and really work together in communicating authentically and in driving the business forwards.

I think the key is in not just accepting a cheque to reinvest in the sport, but to work together with brands to form alignment.

“If you take a company like Porsche or SAP, or any of our partners, they’re trying to become content publishers as well. Putting an ad in a newspaper or just doing some sort of inanimate transaction doesn’t cut it. It’s not about brand exposure, it’s about business growth and how you can use both platforms to communicate messages from one business to another, to communicate directly to a consumer, and really allowing a consumer to be a fan of a brand, and giving them insight into the brand through our platforms and through the shared values that we have.”

Indeed, the WTA recently brought on a new title sponsor for this year’s Finals in the form of Japanese beauty brand Shiseido, which plans to activate the partnership with a video campaign celebrating female contributors to the local tennis community in China.

Lawler also points to a worldwide tie-up announced in January with Moroccan Oil as a prime example of how a commercial collaboration in women’s sport ought to work. That deal is built on the foundation of a video series promoting the philanthropic efforts of WTA athletes, which is posted on the beauty company’s Inspired by Women platform and, in doing so, enables both Moroccan Oil and the WTA to reach a broader audience.

“It enables you to highlight players, what they do off court and their own missions,” Lawler adds. “Then it allows you to really amplify the reach of those messages and it’s a great conversation that we can have in a forum that is so female-focused.

“We want to help to grow the brands’ profiles and bring them to life and do that in parallel to the players’ profiles. It has to be the right fit, it has to be an authentic story, otherwise it doesn’t work. That’s what we are doing and that’s changed our profile and our players’ profiles.”

For Lawler, then, it is clear that she is primarily interested in working with brands that are genuinely committed to promoting all of the WTA’s talent. That sentiment was reflected in the recent launch of the organisation’s athlete-led, multi-season global marketing campaign, ‘It Takes’, which aims to uncover the personalities on the circuit by allowing each player to describe what has driven them to become a professional.

Lawler reveals that more than 100 members participated in the launch, which is emblematic of the WTA’s commitment to marketing its athletes as a whole, as opposed to just focusing on a handful of stars. The Williams sisters might have been the prevailing force in women’s tennis in recent memory, and the Osaka era may now be blossoming, but no single player has won more than one Grand Slam in a calendar year since Angelique Kerber in 2016. What’s more, the first 18 tournaments of this year’s WTA Tour produced 18 different champions for the first time.

“The good thing about women’s tennis having such an incredible depth of field is that matches are very close, the level of tennis is very high, and the technical sports side of tennis is getting better and better,” Lawler declares.

The WTA rolled out the 'It Takes' campaign earlier this year

“Having such an array of champions brings other challenges. We don’t have the Rafa [Nadal], Roger [Federer], [Novak] Djokovic, [Andy] Murray, [Alexander] Zverev, [Dominic] Thiem now, you know this group that has really dominated. That gives you brand consistency, that gives you a repeat in growing a player profile over and over again. That’s more difficult for us because we’ve had such a huge number of champions, but that does show that the competitive nature of the WTA is really intense.”

And the more one delves into the WTA’s wider strategy, the more that line of thinking seems to pervade every corner of the business. The organising body recently announced a four-year rights partnership in the UK with internet giant Amazon, adding to other streaming deals with Tennis Channel in the US and DAZN in Spain and Brazil.

This momentum is taking place simultaneous to other major transformations in business and in the way brands communicate.

Lawler says being on the same platform as the ATP Tour was key to the WTA’s tie-up with Amazon, but more generally, the WTA has looked to capitalise on digital distribution to generate more exposure for its players.

“On OTT, in addition to the live matches, what it allows you to do is tell more athlete stories, more behind-the-scenes, more [about] who they really are, and they all have incredibly interesting stories,” Lawler explains. “To put an athlete on a court who can play phenomenal tennis, who’s in super physical shape and is an incredible athlete is just not enough.

“If you can take reality television and make stars out of people around their daily lives, then surely sports is the ultimate reality television. So it gives us the opportunity to tell the whole story on and off the court, and that’s what’s great about OTT.”

Now on the cusp of what many are heralding as a new commercial dawn for women’s sport, it seems the WTA could hardly ask to be in a safer pair of hands.

Other sports are still in the nascent stages of developing their strategies for female athletes, whereas the WTA appears to have been ready and waiting for this opportunity for some time. Lawler reveals that the WTA is already entertaining “a lot of calls” from other leagues and indeed agencies advising other sports about “how to grow the female side of their business”, and it should hardly come as a surprise.

The Original 9 broke new ground as the founding members of the WTA in 1973, opening a door for female tennis players that did not previously exist, and the organisation has continued on that trail ever since. As Lawler herself notes, though, for the WTA and for women in sport, “there is always much more to do.”

Micky Lawler is speaking at the SportsPro OTT Summit, which is taking place in Madrid from 19th to 21st November. For more information, click here.