Roland Garros, 350 million revenue and over 700,000 spectators. Today the big challenges

The stands of the Court Philippe Chatrier will be sold out to watch the men's semifinals of Roland Garros 2025. It will be a historic edition for Italy with Lorenzo Musetti taking on Carlos Alcaraz in the afternoon and Jannik Sinner awaited by former world number one Novak Djokovic and after Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori's victory yesterday in the mixed doubles tournament.

A record edition also in terms of the number of spectators and receipts, which paradoxically, however, could see the gap widen between the event's turnover and the prize money awarded to the tennis players, exacerbating a problem that is becoming increasingly evident on the circuit. The players' unions complain, in fact, that the organisers of Grand Slam tournaments distribute too low a percentage of the revenue to the athletes through participation and result bonuses, especially in relation to what is guaranteed in other top-level professional sports. While in the US, for example, franchise owners and players share the revenue more or less equally, in the world's major tennis events, players get between 10 and 20 per cent.

In the case of the Parisian clay-court tournament for this year, an attendance of more than 710,000 spectators was expected, compared to 675,000 for the record 2024 edition (the Internazionali d'Italia in Rome a few weeks ago recorded 392,000).

As a result, total revenue is expected to be around EUR 350 million, exceeding last year's EUR 338 million. For 2025, Roland Garros has created a new 5,000 square metre fan zone in Place de la Concorde with a pair of big screens and to accommodate TVs, it has organised a second evening section for the men's semi-finals to separate the playing sessions. Indeed, almost 40% of the revenue comes from TV rights. Ticketing and hospitality are worth another third, merchandising just under 10% and the 22 sponsors (differentiated by various levels of partnership and visibility) contribute the remaining 20% to the event's budget. The main sponsor is Bnp Paribas, which is expected to pay around 17 million euros per year. Premium sponsors are Emirates, Lacoste, Renault and Rolex and pay around 10 million each per year.

Compared to this growing turnover, the Parisian organisation has set the prize money for 2025 at 56.3 million euros, an increase of +5% compared to 53.5 million in 2024. An overall figure that places Roland-Garros behind the Us Open, which in 2024 distributed almost 70 million euros, Wimbledon, which boasts a prize pool of around 60 million, and the Australian Open, which in January 2025 raised its prize pool to 58 million euros (96.5 million Australian dollars), an increase of 11.6% compared to 2024.