"Not acceptable" - Nick Kyrgios reacts as Novak Djokovic's PTPA highlights poor revenue sharing in tennis compared to NBA, NFL, MLB, PGA & NHL

Nick Kyrgios has reiterated Novak Djokovic-led PTPA's claim that the governing bodies of tennis distribute a low percentage of their income to the players.

Kyrgios is currently rehabilitating a wrist injury that forced him to withdraw from Wimbledon and the US Open in 2023. The 28-year-old has played only one match on the ATP tour this year, and is eyeing a return to professional tennis soon.

Nick Kyrgios has been a regular figure on Instagram during his time away from the sport. When the Aussie is not giving updates to his fans about his injury or documenting his home life, he is busy reposting informative tennis content.

In that vein, he took to his Instagram stories on Friday (December 8) to amplify an infographic posted by the Novak Djokovic-led Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA).

In the first slide of the Instagram carousel post, revenue sharing in professional tennis (~18%) was compared with that of NBA (49-51%), NHL (50%), NFL (48%), MLB (48%) and PGA (~34%). Unimpressed by the numbers, Nick Kyrgios wrote in his caption:

"Lol not acceptable."

Nick Kyrgios via Instagram stories

Novak Djokovic was among the first top players in the modern era to call for an increase in prize money in 2018. The Serb beckoned his colleagues back then to fight for a more equitable share of the annual revenue. He also asserted that players in the NBA and NFL were better incentivized than tennis players.

"If you see an NBA [basketball] player or an NFL [American football] player you think seven figures in their bank account and I don’t think that’s the case even for [some players who] make the main draw at Grand Slams," Djokovic told the Independent in 2018.

Djokovic's fight for higher prize money came to a head in 2020 when he left the ATP Players' Council to form the Professional Tennis Players Association.

Novak Djokovic-led PTPA's executive director blames broadcasting for poor revenue sharing in pro tennis

The 24-time Major winner has been a proponent of better revenue distribution in tennis since 2018

Meanwhile, Ahmad Nassar, the executive director of Novak Djokovic-led PTPA, attributed the the poor revenue distribution in tennis to the lack of proper broadcasting.

"For every other major sport, more than half of their revenue now comes from broadcast as opposed to ticketing," Nassar said in the video shared by the organization on Instagram. "But in tennis, we have the opposite. And that is backward, it should be the other way around, where broadcast is more and where that then impacts the players in every other sport. Players are getting roughly 50% of the revenue derived from not only broadcast but the sport overall."

"But when broadcast is 50% of that share of revenue, the impact on the players is immediate and it is tremendous," he added. "And here it is in tennis, we have to unlock that we need to simply turn the key to be able to deliver this value again to everybody in the ecosystem."