Thursday 18 January 2018 06:12, UK
Rafael Nadal has called for a greater distribution of revenue within professional tennis, insisting the sport needs the top 300 players to be making a living.
The world No 1, who breezed through to the third round of the Australian Open with a straight-sets victory over Leonardo Mayer, was asked for his views on media reports which indicated Novak Djokovic was pushing for a revolt over the way revenues from the four Grand Slams are distributed.
Djokovic, the president of the ATP's players' council, refuted claims that a potential Australian Open boycott next year had been discussed and claimed his part in the meeting had been "exaggerated".
Nadal, former vice-president of the players' council, insisted the sport had helped professional players ranked in the lower echelons but conceded more should be done.
"Just to be clear, I don't know 100 per cent about what's going on or not, but at some point, it's good that the players speak between each other about what we want or what we don't want," Nadal said.
One sport is bigger not only when the top guys win a lot of money. It's bigger when a sport creates a lot of jobs.
"That's all. (It's) not about union or not union. Forget about this... I believe that tennis has improved a lot over the last couple of years for the lower ranking players.
"One sport is bigger not only when the top guys win a lot of money. It's bigger when a sport creates a lot of jobs.
"If there are 300 people living from tennis is better than if there are only 100.
"But that's my opinion. The real thing is if we can help at some point to the players that need more help, will be fantastic."
Nadal, a 16-time Grand Slam champion, defended the difficulty players find in forging a long and prosperous career on tour and argued tennis was a more "global" sport than football despite having less public appeal.
"You know what? The market is the market," said Nadal, who will next meet Bosnian 28th seed Damir Dzumhur.
"We cannot fight about the market. Probably our sport is more global than football.
"At the same time the sport is much bigger, football (more) than tennis, in terms of money, in terms of millions of fans.
"But we cannot compare the sports. We have to fight to make our sport better, bigger, and to have the best show possible for the crowd. Only like this we going to grow in all terms."
