Not true at all. I recall a couple years ago they were struggling to sell seats for Sharapova games and there was speculation that it was because of the annoying as **** noises she makes.
How is that relevant? If anything it does the opposite of support your point, ie. that only in the main draws can women's tennis be anywhere near as popular as mens.
Who cares anyway? Women's sport in general will never be as popular or lucrative as men's, and the standard will never be anywhere near as good. It doesn't mean it doesn't have it's place though.
Really, where did you read this?Blogs? someones been ****ing up by giving her all that appearance money. Mind you Sharapova-serena matches aren't a great example of a big natch, as it's so one-sided.
In the end, as Zinzan says, I prefer WTA, partly because of it's faults. There are more UE's because players go for it more, the grinding game of many on the ATP is dull for me. There's more drama because, yes, often Women show more emotions. Mind you, I suppose Paire, Fognini and Kyrgios may be arguments against that.
I like womens Golf and cricket too, but not as much as the mens games, partly because brute-force is less prevalent, and that can be a problem with tennis too. It's all down to the technology for me, the things they hit it with just do too much nowadays for me. Big strong blokes bashing things is fine for a bit, but it can be tiring.
Yet they'll never be as popular because, shock horror, men generally play and watch sport more. There's a case to be made that the reason the WTA is most the popular female sport is the glamour and fashion involved in that game. Gymnastics and ice Skating the women are more famous too, in general.
ATP is more popular, but if needed WTA could survive easily on their own, but prize money would be hit. Yet the Grand Slams are really successful, so why would they change it, people do like WTA too, and it all works. Equal prize money is just good PR. It creates hate amongst a few odd-balls on social media, but in general it works for the Slams image.
Yet, as you say, they all have their place, and in the end it helps all sports to promote an atmosphere welcoming for everyone, so people that think promoting and investing in this is detrimental to mens sport are quite frankly silly. It has massive up-sides and the more people play the better they get, so the standard goes up.
I think what Barker and Becker are getting at with the Williams sisters stuff is they concentrate their season mainly
around the Slams, which is nothing new for older players, I think that's Fed's way of doing things ATM.
