2025 WTA Finals: The business, controversy and future of the US$15.5m showpiece

The season-ending WTA Finals are the most lucrative, prestigious event in women’s tennis outside of the four Grand Slams.

This year, the world’s best eight singles players and doubles teams will compete at the King Saud University Indoor Arena in Riyadh for a prize pot worth a record US$15.5 million.

The return to Saudi Arabia hasn’t been universally welcomed, but the deal is hugely beneficial to the WTA as it concludes another significant year of off-court activity – with a few key questions about the future still to be answered.

The King Saud University Arena is home to the 2025 WTA Finals (Image credit: Getty Images)

The host

The WTA is in the second season of a three-year deal with the Saudi Tennis Federation to bring the finals to the Middle East. The financial benefits of the agreement are obvious, but Saudi’s commitment provides some stability for an event which has endured a fairly nomadic existence since ending a two-decade stint at New York’s Madison Square Garden at the start of the century.

The last six iterations have taken place at six different venues, with a lucrative ten-year deal to stage the event in Shenzhen scuppered first by the Covid-19 pandemic and then by the WTA’s withdrawal from China due to concerns over the safety of Peng Shuai.

The decision to bring elite women’s tennis to Saudi Arabia has proved hugely controversial given the country’s human rights record and restrictions on women’s freedoms. Former professionals Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert previously said it was a “significant step backward to the detriment not just of women’s sport, but women”.

The WTA, which says it received multiple bids for the finals, has defended the arrangement, calling it a “positive step for the long-term growth of women’s tennis as a global and inclusive sport”.

The players have praised the facilities on offer in Riyadh and some have expressed their hope that their presence can help inspire social change.

However, last year’s event was plagued by poor crowds, with just 400 spectators attending the second day of the competition in a venue that holds 5,000 people and with tickets as cheap as UK£6. Despite this, the final was a sell out and the WTA claims the total attendance was two thirds of capacity.

It’s a far cry from when 133,000 fans attended the 2017 WTA Finals in Singapore. But it’s worth pointing out the WTA has also struggled to attract crowds in Cancun and Texas in recent years, suggesting the problem is not unique to Saudi Arabia.

Prize money

The 2025 WTA Finals boast a record prize pot of US$15.5 million, a US$250,000 increase from last year’s previous benchmark. The 2026 edition will increase this figure once again, with another quarter of a million up for grabs, ensuring more headlines about a record prize fund for a third consecutive year.

The winning singles player could take home US$5.35 million if they go the entire competition undefeated, while an undefeated doubles team could share US$1.14 million. Last year, Coco Gauff won US$4.8 million – the highest financial reward ever in the history of women’s sport.

The prize money is a huge reason why the WTA agreed to take its flagship event to the country. The total figure represents a huge increase on the US$9 million on offer in 2023, a sum which was funded by the WTA itself, and is even more than the US$14 million Shenzhen promised.

However, the Czech bid that lost out to Cancun in 2023 claims to have offered US$15 million – and the prospect of larger crowds.

Broadcast arrangements

The WTA hopes the 2025 season builds on a hugely successful 2024, during which its global broadcast and streaming audience increased by ten per cent to 1.1 billion.

As the circuit’s most high-profile tournament, the WTA Finals can have a significant impact on the season-long figure. Last year’s event attracted a global audience of 78 million, a 160 per cent year-on-year increase.

Both increases can at least be partly explained by the WTA’s rapprochement with China and the return of live coverage on state-owned CCTV and other services operated by China Media Group (CMG).

However, China doesn’t account for all growth. Outside the country, viewership for the finals rose by 23 per cent, with large increases in Italy, Spain and Latin America. Last season was also the first to be covered by a new five-year deal with Sky Sports in the UK, providing a high-profile platform for the WTA and the WTA Finals, which were previously covered by Amazon Prime.

Indeed, tennis is an increasingly important sport for Sky given its audience is 58 per cent female. Sky also has long-term deals with the WTA in Germany and Italy. Tennis Channel holds the rights in Spain and BeIN Sports is the tour’s broadcast partner in France.

Elsewhere, DAZN has the rights in several African, Asian and European markets, ESPN broadcasts the tour in Latin America, while TSN has a deal to air the WTA 1000 series, selected grass court tournaments and the finals in Canada.

Every single WTA Tour event outside the US is available on Tennis Channel, which extended its deal for another six years in June. Meanwhile, the WTA has strengthened its ties with China by agreeing a new streaming deal with Tencent.

The bigger picture

Veteran sports executive Valerie Camillo will have plenty on her to-do list when she replaces Steve Simon as WTA chair on 17^th November. She joins at a time when the commercial future of the tour is very much up in the air.

Discussions on a long-touted commercial merger with the men’s ATP, which would see broadcast, data and sponsorship rights pooled into a new joint organisation called ‘Tennis Ventures’, are ongoing. It had been hoped substantial progress would be achieved by the end of the year and ATP chairman Andrea Gaudenzi recently said he is optimistic about securing approval for a non-binding “short-form” agreement at the upcoming ATP Finals in Turin, paving the way for Tennis Ventures to be operational by early 2027.

WTA Ventures, the tour’s commercial arm, increased its revenue by 24 per cent in its first year and has achieved record social and digital audience growth. The next step could be to bring production in-house once a deal with DAZN, signed when it was known as Perform Group, expires in 2026. This would give it greater control over its broadcast operations and could pave the way for a launch of a DTC streaming service.

In time, a decision will also need to be made on whether to keep the WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia or seek a new long-term host. Given the WTA’s growing ties with the country and its interest in tennis – it will host a new men’s ATP 1000 event in 2026 – few would bet on the tournament leaving Riyadh any time soon.