Australian Open: Record $71 million in prize money for winners of 2020 edition

The winner of Australian Open 2020 will take home a record $71 million in prize money, a 13.6% rise from the previous edition of the tournament. The Australian Open is the inaugural grand slam tennis tournament of the year and will be taking place between January 20 and February 2.

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Increase in prize money

The singles champions will take home $4.12 million. The prize money has increased by more than 412%, or $57.1 million in the 20 years since 2001 when it was $13.9 million and has increased by 61.4% over the last five years. 

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The prize money was announced on Tuesday and Craig Tiley, the AO tournament director said, "We have long been committed to improving the pay and conditions for a deeper pool of international tennis players, in fact since AO 2007 prize money has more than tripled from $20 million to the $71 million for 2020 we are announcing today. This year, as we do every year, we worked with the tours to establish the weighting for prize money increases round-by-round, and we pushed to reward players competing early in the tournament in both singles and doubles. We strongly believe in growing prize money at all levels of the game and we will continue to work with the playing group to create viable career paths in the sport and enable more players to make more money.”

The increase in the prize money is as follows:

• First round qualifiers – $20,000 up 33.3 percent
• First round qualifiers – $20,000 up 33.3 percent
• First round main draw singles players – $90,000 up 20 percent
• Players reaching the second round – $128,000 up 21.9 percent from $105,000
• Semifinalists will earn $1.04 million, up 13 percent

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