Why billionaire’s daughter is fronting tennis players’ push for more prize money

A billionaire’s daughter would not necessarily seem the natural candidate to front a campaign for greater prize money. The counterargument is that Jessica Pegula, who has been the glue between the world’s top 20 players in their pay dispute with the grand-slams, is more motivated by fighting for a fair share for others than her own monetary gain.

That her father, Terry Pegula, who made his fortune via investments in fracking, owns the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres also means the world No5 has firsthand boardroom knowledge of how other sports operate.

The NFL and NHL, for example, award players a 48 and 50 per cent share of the league’s revenue respectively. The recently announced £53.3million prize pot for Roland Garros amounts to about 15 per cent of the tournament’s projected revenue — a figure that prompted Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka, the men’s and women’s world No1s, to express their frustration and go so far as to threaten a boycott.

Pegula is not naive to how such complaints could be perceived by the public, but the 32-year-old is thoughtful and articulate when putting forward their case.

“What we’re really looking at is player welfare, pensions, stuff like that. That’s really important and right now the grand-slams don’t contribute anything,” the American says. “Second to that is the prize money revenue share not changing. It’s not meant to look like ‘we want more money’, that it’s greedy, it’s just what’s fair. When you look at other sports, the revenue share [in tennis] is not changing.

“When it goes up, it will give lower-ranked players more money to be able to support their careers, whether that’s the first rounds at slams or qualifying, which can pay for their coaching or travel for an entire year, so it all goes hand in hand to help the whole ecosystem grow.

“I feel like other sports have done more in that sense. The slams are just doing the same as they always have, but have we ever really got together and questioned it? It’s amazing that we’re seeing the men and women together. I don’t think that’s ever really happened in any sport.”

The revenue share at Roland Garros is estimated to have actually decreased by 0.6 per cent this year, despite prize money itself rising by 9.5 per cent. Wimbledon is due to announce its prize money for 2026 next month and distributes 90 per cent of its surplus — £48.1million last year — back to the LTA to develop tennis in the UK, but that is another looming flashpoint.

Pegula adds that Sinner’s and Sabalenka’s comments at the Italian Open were not co-ordinated, but simply a case of them “speaking the truth” about feeling disrespected and ignored. “When you see two No1s come out and be really against it, it’s kind of struck a fire and really blown up, and that’s honestly what we needed,” she says.

As for the prospect of a boycott, Pegula is measured but still adamant that she will support the player group’s next steps, whatever they may be: “I’m always going to be on the side of the players.”

It is not the only time-consuming political role Pegula has taken on while performing at the peak of the game. She was also recently appointed as the chairwoman of the WTA’s Architecture Council, which is discussing how to overhaul the tennis calendar to mitigate the number of players suffering from injuries and burnout — a protracted process that Pegula is unlikely to see the benefit of during her own career.

“When you get older, you come across all these issues that keep happening, and I’m more of a person that’s like, ‘Well, why don’t we do something about it?’ ” Pegula says. “I’ve realised that you want to leave something behind, a bit of a legacy, and give back to your sport. Not everyone wants to do that as a player. Maybe it’s the background of my family. Maybe it’s just that how I’ve thought about my career is a bit different.”

Pegula has won 11 titles on the WTA Tour, reached the US Open final in 2024 and spent the past 205 consecutive weeks ranked inside the top ten. Although her family’s wealth was an obvious advantage, success is not handed out in tennis without a degree of toil and tumult. A solid but by no means standout junior, Pegula turned professional in 2009, aged 15, and did not break into the top 100 for a decade, instead playing in lower-rung events on the unglamorous Challenger circuit.

“It was tough and I think I gained a lot of respect from other players that were on the same journey,” she says. “I’ve always tried to carry myself as just a normal person because that’s to me how I am. I’m definitely aware that I was very privileged and had a lot of good opportunities, and I didn’t want to waste those.

“My dad is super blue collar. He grew up with nothing and built his way up, and that mindset was instilled in my family from a young age. We didn’t come into a lot of that [wealth] until I was 17 or 18. If I grew up with all that stuff, maybe I would be different, but I think I’ve also embraced it. I do have this really crazy story. People think this way about me, but that’s OK. I’m still going to work hard and go after my goals that I’ve had since I was seven.”

Injuries and inconsistency plagued much of Pegula’s early twenties before her mother, Kim, who was central to running the family’s sports businesses before suffering a stroke in 2022, made unapologetically clear she needed to take more responsibility and escape the purgatory outside the top 100.

Pegula won her first WTA title shortly afterwards in 2019 and within three seasons had risen to world No3. “I wasn’t really doing that great. I was OK, I was hurt a lot, all these other things, but I made the decision to take my career into my own hands, and that helped me mature really quickly and my career has been going up ever since,” she says.

“I always believed I could do it. Over the last few years, working on different things has freed me up. I don’t think, ‘I need to make semis,’ or, ‘I need to win this tournament,’ as much. I’ve dropped the whole results aspect of it and I’m solely focused on what I need to do to become a better player.

“Obviously I still want to win and I have goals, but it’s not at the forefront. Tennis is so focused on results and we play so much that it can create this really unhealthy balance.”

A grand-slam title is obviously the biggest accolade to still elude Pegula. She beat Iga Swiatek, then the world No1, en route to the 2024 final at Flushing Meadows before losing to Sabalenka. Pegula also reached the semi-finals of the US Open last year, losing to Sabalenka again, and the Australian Open in January, where she was beaten by the eventual champion Elena Rybakina. That proximity to sporting greatness can define many athletes, but Pegula sees the bigger picture — both on and off the court.

“If you would have asked me three or four years ago, I would have been satisfied if I stopped,” she says. “I have a very good awareness of who I am and my career. I had something to prove to myself early on, but now everything else just seems like a bonus. I’m extremely motivated, but I’m content that I’ve tried to turn every stone and do everything I can to try to become a better player, but at the same time knowing it’s not the be all and end all.”

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