The Great ITF 10k Swindle

wimdledont · Challenger level

The Great ITF 10k Swindle

wimdledont · Challenger level

Let's take an example of a typical Sharm 10k, and see how it pans out for the players.

UK-Sharm flights are around US$300. So it makes some sense to go for more than one week. Say a fortnight.

Room rates are US$55 per night, in a double. US$770 for the fortnight. Shared airport transfer US$40.

So it costs you a minimum of a memorabe US$1,110 for your two weeks tennis.

Prize money: -20% tax Take home Number of competitors

Winner US$1,568 314 1,254 1
RU 980 196 774 1
SF 490 98 382 2
QF 245 49 196 4
R16 196 39 157 8
R32 98 19 79 16
Q2 ? ? ? 8
Q1 ? ? ? 16

I don't have any info on the prize money in qualifying. Often also, the field is not full. If it is full, there are 56 competitors. For ease of calculation, lets say an average field has 50 entrants.

Really good business, eh? For airlines and taxi-drivers to begin with. 50 passengers x US$300 = US$15,000 per fortnight. Climate change deniers may now jump for joy.

Then for the hotel, 50 guests x US$385pw = US$17,250pw. That's good too.

For the guests, the cost per week is US$555. So 48 of the 50 are subsidising this tournament their own (family) money. The RU earns US$219, possibly enough for her trainfares to and from the UK airport; the winner gets US$699 - less than £500 - about the same as a good UK starting salary in tennis marketing, for example.

So the actual odds of winning are 50/1. And it costs you US$555 to back yourself; and if you do win, the payout is just over evens.

EDIT: AARGH! The table above got de-formatted after I posted; and I don't know how to correct it, so it may be difficult to read. Sorry.

-- Edited by wimdledont on Saturday 21st of March 2015 11:57:58 AM

paulisi · Tennis legend

There are several threads on this topic and it is a known issue which the ITF has investigated and put forward proposals for next season - mainly increased prize money, hospitality and more even distribution of tournaments. Will it happen? Who knows....

wimdledont · Challenger level

Yeah, its an issue that comes up again and again. Andy raised the issue in a BBC story here...

www.itftennis.com/procircuit/players/player/profile.aspx

It's the root of all the evil around match-fixing here...

britishtennis.activeboard.com/t59715200/match-fixing/

and it's arguably background noise on nearly every thread on this forum that isn't about Andy, Heather or Laura. If you won a Junior GS, special rules apply. I'm aware of the ITF report, but have lost the link. If anybody can oblige?

Meanwhille, I'll carry on and try to see if I can't say something original or useful eventually. I decided it best to set up this thread to quarantine my own frustration with the system, so that it doesn't too badly infect other threads, like it did here...

britishtennis.activeboard.com/t59810558/week-11-itf-10k-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt-hard/

Then those of you who are simply not interested in either the subject, or my opinions on it, can just scroll past it.

Corrections and contradictions are welcome. There are going to be bits of the following where many of the contributors on here know a lot more than me. If anybody is prepared to share some of this knowledge with me, thanks in advance...

TBC...

wimdledont · Challenger level

So, in a 10k field, 48 of 50 players (96%), are effectively keen amateurs going broke to pursue an expensive hobby. The RU is off benefits (though unable to pay her rent on a UK property), but at least the tournament winner is moving on up towards the sunlit uplands of WTA multi-millionairess slebdom, or at least a chance to play in a 25k, perhaps?

Not so much.

She's made a living that week, but the female ITF points system is very peculiar...

www.itftennis.com/procircuit/players/ranking-points.aspx

She gets 12 points for winning her 5 matches. There are very few of the next grade up of tournament (15k), so she is playing catch-up with the women playing 25ks. Who are dividing over 4 times as many points between them.

The 25k girls are also more likely to be able to play a full annual programme, playing up to 34 tournaments, and dropping all of the worst results.

Let me invent 2 players...

Player 10k - played in 10 tournaments - played 50 matches, won 50, lost 0. Points 10x12 = 120. WTA Ranking 213 this week.

Player 25k - played in 30 tournaments - improbably winning 2 of them to get 100 points, and otherwise getting 2 R1 wins for a further 10 points. Then she also gets 1 point for each of her first 12 losses, and discards the surplus. Played 42 matches, won 12, lost 30. Points = 122. WTA WR = 211.

So playing catch-up via 10ks is hard work, if you win every single match you ever play. And if you ever lose a match, better hope it was in the final, or

TBC...

wimdledont · Challenger level

And never get injured. Your ranking is based on your results over a full year. If you can't play 16 tournaments per year, "computer says" you're not very good.

Over the last few weeks, the following 10k-level UK women have had injury issues, to my knowledge:

6. Carreras
7. Boulter
11. Murray
12. Stephenson
13. Dean
14. Silva
19. Windley

Some are playing on through the pain; some are heading back down the greasy pole.

Ratty · County player

Yes, free markets are brutal aren't they. Nurses and teachers get paid less than accountants and lawyers. There's lots of demand for the services of the best tennis players, but none at all for those who are not quite as good. Ditto actors. Ditto musicians. And at least success in tennis doesn't depend on what you look like.

But free markets are better than the alternatives, as any Venezuelan will tell you.

wimdledont · Challenger level

Hi Ratty,

Let's not kick off on that.

I disagree with your apparent ideological prejudices, but that is irrelevant. And I don't think this is about "free" so much as "rigged" markets. Rigged markets are not better than the alternatives.

To resume...

I have suggested (shown?, proved?) above that the ITF 10k circuit is not offering a very plausible/sustainable/whatever career path for 96% of aspiring tennis professionals, due to family finances alone. If we throw in the 35% (7 in the UK top 20) injury rate, it's worse still.

BUT there IS hope. Due to the magic invisible hand thingy which has proved so handy for picking the public purse. (Okay, I'll stop if you will, Ratty). Plus a bit of commendable corruption to ease the wheels...

Consider first this odious Bulgarian person...

www.itftennis.com/procircuit/players/player/profile.aspx

She has a 17/3 W/L record in 2015 in 2015, yet is still contesting 10ks. Is that fair? Surely she should be elsewhere tomorrow?

Then there's also heroic non-Bulgarian...

www.itftennis.com/procircuit/players/player/profile.aspx

She has a 13/2 W/L record this year, yet...

Both have won 2 ITF 10ks this year, as 50/1 shots. Surely they would be both worth considering for some sort of special exemption for DA to one single, maybe even 2, 25ks ?

PROPOSAL: Any ITF tournament winner also wins one Special Exemption pass to one ITF MD at a higher paygrade. Fast-track the winners.

EddietheEagle · County player

Sorry, but what do you want the ITF to do? They don't finance the prizes, promoters do.

wimdledont · Challenger level

At present, the winners do already get fast tracked, via wildcards. It really is very close to mathematically impossible to rise through the 10k ranks by winning matches, without wildcards.

Consider then Oceane, wide and deep...

www.itftennis.com/procircuit/players/player/profile.aspx

... who clearly became very dominant on the 10k circuit, which took her up to around WR500. An advert for the fact that you can advance due to 10k ranking points? Errr....

www.wtatennis.com/players/player/19551/title/oceane-dodin

Well, the wildcards to 25ks, 100ks, 125ks, WTA Premiers and the AO might also have helped. She now has 395 points. Given that winning 16x12 points = 192... The favour of her national association may have helped her a bit.

TBC...

wimdledont · Challenger level

EddietheEagle wrote:
Sorry, but what do you want the ITF to do? They don't finance the prizes, promoters do.

Sorry, Eddie, missed your post in the sequence.

I want rather more than 96% of contestants not to be slapped round the face and told to go home, and stop playing tennis. There has to be a certain rate of attrition; but that is surely too high?

And it's nothing to do with the ITF, now? Well, I've also seen both the ATP and the WTA abrogate all responsibility.

It's fast becoming a perfect advert for the power of unfettered trickle down economics; in 2014, Sugarpova's reported income exceeded all of the prize money awarded to every single female ITF player, combined. Notice that it does not so much trickle down, as plummet up.