During the offseason, escaping the circus surrounding the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ reboot featuring Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios was nearly impossible. Despite the media engine’s efforts to build hype for the occasion—with promotional appearances on The Tonight Show, Piers Morgan Uncensored (*blech*), and even live coverage on the BBC—the 6-3, 6-3 ‘victory’ by Nick Kyrgios was a dud. Who could have predicted that?
Pardon the sarcasm, but I, like many tennis fans, find it difficult to feign excitement for such a shallow spectacle made using our sport. Billie Jean King’s Battle of the Sexes victory is a hallmark moment for women’s tennis, female sport, and the greater fight for women’s rights. We should treat it with the utmost respect—not commoditize its namesake every ten years or so for cheap spectacle.
King vs. Riggs
For the uninitiated, the ‘Battle of the Sexes’ commonly refers to the 1973 match between Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean King. The 55-year-old Riggs was a former top male singles player in the 1930s & 1940s, having won three Grand Slam singles titles, including Wimbledon, and the 29-year-old Billie Jean King was the current women’s World No. 1.
Riggs was an outspoken male chauvinist who dismissed the women’s game as “lousy” and insisted that women should stay “in the bedroom and the kitchen, in that order,” not on the tennis court. Meanwhile, King was a public advocate for equal pay in the sport. A win for Riggs would ‘legitimize’ his claim that women were inferior to the ‘superior’ male gender, whereas a win for King would be a monumental achievement in her fight for equality.
Thankfully, King won the match in straight sets (in a best-of-five format, mind you!). The match drew heavy publicity, and ABC aired it live to roughly 50 million Americans and more than 90 million viewers worldwide. King’s victory brought unprecedented media attention and cultural legitimacy to the newly formed women’s professional tour, then known as the Virginia Slims Circuit, a precursor to today’s WTA. That match directly contributed to the narrowing of the prize money gap in women’s tennis and, more broadly, to the increased visibility of women’s sports in popular culture.
Yet, despite the progress, more work remains.
An Uneven Court
Inequality still persists between men and women in the sport of tennis. While the sport’s biggest events, the four Grand Slams, have paid men and women equally since 2007, the pay gap continues to persist at the tour level. In 2024, total ATP player compensation totaled $261M, whereas total WTA player compensation totaled $221M (a 16.6% difference).
This disparity is prominent even at marquee Masters 1000 events, like Canada or Cincinnati, where both male and female players compete in equal-sized draws and both play best-of-three set matches. At those events, the men play for a collective $9M purse, whereas the women compete for a mere $5M total.
This imbalance shows up in media coverage too; broadcasters rarely give women’s matches the same share of the spotlight as the men’s. Take Roland Garros, for example: since the tournament introduced night sessions in 2021, the tournament has scheduled only four women’s singles matches in that primetime slot. Not a single women’s match appeared under the lights in 2024 or 2025. The pattern carries over to TV coverage as well. A study of ESPN’s US Open broadcast found that ESPN showed men’s matches live on their main channels (ESPN & ESPN2) 10% more often than women’s matches in 2023.
To be clear, tennis is the gold standard for female athletes when it comes to earnings. In 2025, seven of the ten highest-paid female athletes in the world played tennis. However, despite their star power, compelling rivalries, and consistent results, in 2025 the Top 10 female singles players earned 23% less than their male counterparts.
Taking the broader context into consideration, I, along with other tennis fans, players, and commentators, could not help but utter a collective *groan* when Sabalenka and Kyrgios’ sports management agency, Evolve, announced the Battle of the Sexes reboot. If Billie Jean King’s statement victory earned a place at the table for women’s sport, did we need to fight that fight again?
Even though Kyrgios and Sabalenka attempted to downplay the stakes of the matchup by claiming, “It’s just gonna be fun,” you cannot separate the namesake from its legacy. As Barney Roonay, chief sports writer for The Guardian, writes, “Tennis’s new Battle of the Sexes [offers] up the opportunity to belittle women’s sport.” I completely agree with this statement, because at best, a win by Sabalenka would reaffirm an idea that we’ve already solidified: women deserve an equal footing in this sport. At worst? The result gives ammunition to people who justify the pay gap.
Sharing the Court
It’s interesting because over the course of the Australian hardcourt swing, I’ve been able to enjoy other competitive formats that pit men and women against each other on court.
The One Point Slam
For example, at the One Point Slam, top professionals (like Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Carlos Alcaraz, and Jannik Sinner) compete against local celebrities and amateurs of both genders. It feels like Joanna Garland became a superstar overnight by beating Alexander Zverev and Nick Kyrgios en route to the final. Even though in the final, she ultimately lost to a male amateur, Jordan Smith, her fairytale run felt more like a reaffirmation that in tennis, point-to-point, an underdog can slay a Goliath on any given day.
The United Cup
The United Cup asks a more compelling question than whether man or woman is superior. Instead, it asks how men and women can combine their strengths to claim victory.
To give some context, the United Cup is a national competition in which teams compete in a best-of-three format, featuring one men’s, one women’s, and one mixed-doubles match. As Andrea Petkovic notes on The Big T podcast, “Mixed Doubles is just such an amazing showcase of how tennis is unique in the fact that a man and a woman can play on the same court and be equally beneficial to each other.” Oftentimes, the female player brings stability and consistency to the team, whereas the male player brings point-ending firepower, especially at the net.
The ability for men and women to share the same court is a unique value proposition for our sport, and we could better use it to lift the game to new heights. When asked about her thoughts on the Battle of the Sexes in her press conference at the United Cup, Iga Swiatek seemed to echo this point:
I think the name [of the match] was the same as the one from the Billie Jean King Match in ‘73. That’s it. No more similarities […] Women’s tennis stands on its own right now. We have so many great athletes and great stories to present, we don’t necessarily need to compare to men’s tennis. There doesn’t need to be any competition. I think actually events like this one, United Cup, brings tennis all together and WTA fans and ATP fans can watch this even with so much excitement.” – Iga Swiatek during the 2026 United Cup
Tennis has a uniquely rich history, and the tennis court has been the ground to fight for equality. There is Billie Jean King and the Original 9’s fight for equal prize money, Renee Richard’s challenge to the supreme court for trans athletes, and Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe, and the Williams Sisters’ fight to break down racial barriers. We don’t need another Battle of the Sexes.