LONDON (AP) — Amid players' calls for a bigger share of revenues, Wimbledon on Thursday announced 20% increases in total prize money and for the singles champions, who will earn 3.6 million pounds ($4.8 million) each at the grass-court Grand Slam next month.
The total prize money including player per diems will be 64.2 million pounds ($85.8 million), described as “by far” the biggest annual increase in the tournament's history.
“I would hope the players would welcome it. It’s a significant amount of money,” All England Club chair Deborah Jevans said at a press conference.
“We’ve demonstrated that we’ve looked at every round, including qualifying. My hope is that the players do recognize what a significant increase that this is."
Players have long been calling for a greater share of revenues from the four Grand Slams and recently began taking steps toward collective action.
For this year’s Wimbledon, players advocated for total prize money of 71 million pounds ($95 million), Jevans said, citing her recent talks in Paris with Larry Scott, the former WTA CEO who has been advising the players.
Ahead of the French Open, No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka said players should at some point organize a boycott if their demands aren’t met. Men's No. 1 Jannik Sinner, Coco Gauff and others also spoke out.
Then, in pre-tournament news conferences at Roland Garros, top-10 players limited their sessions with journalists to 15 minutes in symbolic protest of their share of the tournament revenues.
Just over a year ago, 20 leading players signed a letter to the heads of the four Grand Slams seeking more prize money and a greater voice in decision making.
Wimbledon, the oldest Grand Slam tournament, begins June 29. Iga Swiatek is the women's defending champion. Sinner beat Carlos Alcaraz in last year's men's final and the Spaniard will miss the event because of a wrist injury.
First-round prize money this year will be 80,000 pounds ($107,000), which is a 21% increase over 2024, and the qualifying rounds will see a total increase of 25%.
The runner-up in the men's and women's singles will get 1.8 million pounds ($2.4 million) each. That's an 18% increase over last year.
Jevans added: “This announcement recognizes the success of The Championships, and that we operate a sustainable program that allows us not only to increase prize money but also to invest in facilities, the grass court season and support British and international tennis."
Increasing prize money is a balancing act because 90% of any distributable financial surplus from Wimbledon goes to the Lawn Tennis Association, which is Britain’s governing body for tennis and padel.
The LTA works to increase participation in the sport, renovate courts, support elite player development, and run grass-court tournaments in the buildup to Wimbledon.
For calendar year 2025, the LTA reported a 4% decrease in the Wimbledon surplus (48.6 million pounds or $65 million) compared to 2024, though the LTA’s total revenue was up 2% — in part, it said, because of the introduction of a women’s tour event at Queen’s Club.
AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
FILE - Italy's Jannik Sinner returns to Carlos Alcaraz of Spain in the men's singles final at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Sunday, July 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
FILE - Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus serves to Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. during a women's singles semifinal match at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Thursday, July 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
Damaging storms swept through the Midwest, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of customers and causing more than a thousand flight delays or cancellations at Chicago airports with more potentially severe weather expected Thursday.
The National Weather Service said it received more than a dozen reports of tornadoes Wednesday across northern Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Illinois. There were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths.
Weather service meteorologist Frank Pereira said the frontal system that produced the storms, including high winds and hail, was moving eastward Thursday. There was also a slight risk of severe thunderstorms in parts of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, where expected high heat and humidity spurred heat advisories by the weather service for Thursday and Friday.
The storms are being fueled by cool air from Canada clashing with warm, humid air from the South.
“Going forward, we’re expecting another area of severe weather to develop across portions of the central Plains, Midwest, particularly from Iowa, northern Missouri, northeastward through the Great Lakes,” Pereira said. “Again, it’s all tied into a pretty well-defined frontal system.”
Potentially dangerous heat and high humidity also was forecast Thursday and Friday for a swath of the East Coast from the mid-Atlantic to the Northeast, where daily high record temperatures could be broken in numerous places, the weather service said. Temperatures in the mid-90s Fahrenheit (mid-30s Celsius) were expected, but with the humidity it could feel like 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) or more, the service said.
Philadelphia declared a heat health emergency for Thursday and Friday, activating cooling centers, home visits by field teams, outreach to people experiencing homelessness and other services. New York City officials were also urging residents to take precautions, including drinking plenty of water and finding a cool place to stay if they do not have air conditioning.
Wednesday storms moved into the Chicago area in the afternoon, downing trees and damaging some buildings.
The two major Chicago airports, Chicago O’Hare International Airport and Chicago Midway International Airport, temporarily put all flights on hold in the evening due to thunderstorms. A similar ground stop was issued at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York due to thunderstorms.
By Wednesday evening, more than 1,000 flights going into and out of Chicago had been delayed or canceled, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking website.
Air traffic appeared to return to normal Thursday morning, with only 24 flight cancellations and 34 delays nationwide, FlightAware reported.
Strong winds blew part of the roof off an apartment building in the Chicago area, forcing residents to leave, according to NBC 5 Chicago. Elsewhere, barns collapsed in Wisconsin, buildings were crushed in rural northern Missouri and some large trees and power lines were downed in other areas across the Midwest, photos and video online showed.
Around 390,000 customers had no electricity in the Midwest on Thursday. There were nearly 226,000 outages in Illinois, including around 150,000 in Cook County, while 85,000 homes and businesses were without power in Michigan, according to poweroutage.us.
Commonwealth Edison Company, which provides electric service across northern Illinois, said the storms had downed poles and wires.
“We know this is challenging and will restore service as safely and quickly as conditions allow,” the company said in a post on X.
The storms soaked Rate Field in Chicago before Wednesday night’s game between the White Sox and the Atlanta Braves.
The story has been updated to correct the name of the White Sox stadium to Rate Field, from Guaranteed Rate Field.
Associated Press reporter Dave Collins contributed from Hartford, Connecticut.
This frame grab from video shows a downed tree after storms struck Amherst, Ohio, west of Cleveland on Wednesday, June 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Courtesy WEWS/NEWS5) TELEVISION OUT
Grounds crew remove water from the field after severe thunderstorms came through the Chicago area before a baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the Atlanta Braves, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/David Banks)
This frame grab from aerial video shows a building in Stickney, Illinois, after its roof was damaged by the severe storms that struck the Chicago area on Wednesday, June 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Courtesy WMAQ-TV in Chicago) TELEVISION OUT
