Tennis maternity deal with Saudis is grossest example of sportswashing yet

Telegraph

20-03-2025

When the Women's Tennis Association unveiled its maternity policy earlier this month, it was billed as a breakthrough moment for women's sport.
Under the scheme, players who pause their careers to have children will be able to access maternity leave for up to a year, while grants for fertility treatments, including egg-freezing and IVF, will also be made available. Those who become a parent via partner pregnancy, surrogacy or adoption will also be entitled to two months of paid leave. Never before has such a comprehensive maternity policy been packaged together for female athletes.
The WTA estimates that the world's top 320 players will be eligible for the scheme, which those on the lower rungs of tennis's ranking ladder will no doubt welcome. It also claims it is an example of female empowerment.
Pioneering? Groundbreaking? Trailblazing? If it sounds too good to be true, that's because it is. The less celebratory fact is that the WTA's maternity scheme will be bankrolled entirely by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), marking a significant development in the multi-year partnership the organisation signed with the country's sovereign wealth fund in May last year. Forget the Saudi Pro League, LIV Golf and Fifa awarding the 2034 men's World Cup to the kingdom – this is the grossest example of sportswashing yet.
Nobody is disputing the WTA's intention here. No sportswoman should be disadvantaged for wanting to start a family and the organisation rightly wants to support mothers who compete on the tour. Victoria Azarenka, a representative on the WTA Players' Council who gave birth to her son Leo in 2016, described the news as 'incredible' and claimed it would help normalise motherhood in sport. But there are also uncomfortable questions.
Any notion of progress is completely undermined by the WTA's dependence on a country that jails and tortures those who campaign for women's rights. On The Tennis Podcast (listen below), sports commentator Catherine Whitaker went as far as to claim the situation would not look out of place in The Handmaid's Tale, claiming female tennis players are now being used as 'pawns' by the Saudi state.
When asked about the disconnect between employment benefits for women being so closely tied to a nation whose human-rights record for women and LGBTQ+ people has been heavily criticised by human rights groups, Portia Archer, the WTA's chief executive, was quick to swat away any controversy. 'Questions about Saudi society are really not questions for me or the WTA,' was the pointed response she gave in a video interview. 'They're questions for the Saudis to answer.'
Any element of truth to this was dwarfed by her ignorance. Saudi Arabia might have advanced women's rights in recent years – women in the country are eligible for 10 weeks of paid maternity leave – but by using Saudi Arabia's public money to position itself as a bastion of female empowerment, the WTA is complicit in the country's ongoing persecution of women. It is complicit in the kidnapping of women such as Manahel al-Otaibi, a 30-year-old fitness instructor and women's rights activist. She was sentenced to 11 years in prison for 'terrorist offences' after posting photos of herself in a shopping mall without wearing an abaya, a traditional Saudi dress, on Snapchat.
Manahel's sister, Fawzia, who has been campaigning for her sister's release since she forcibly disappeared between November 2023 and January last year, expressed her indignation at the WTA's maternity scheme on social media.
While Saudi Arabia funds paid maternity leave for WTA players, my sister,
a fitness trainer, Manahel remains imprisoned and tortured simply for being a woman who chose to live freely.
Saudi Arabia doesn't support women—it buys global silence on its crimes against them… https://t.co/dMfDmqf4Tt pic.twitter.com/S3Rezjt8Y9
— فوز العتيبي (@ahxmousa) March 9, 2025
While official figures have not been disclosed, it is thought players who compete in 15 events a year on the WTA tour will be entitled to monthly maternity payments of up to $7,000 (£5,395). When you consider Saudi's PIF is valued at £712 billion – and at present around 20 mothers are competing on the circuit – the total sum of the scheme will hardly make a dent in the fund.
And where does this leave players such as Daria Kasatkina, currently ranked just outside the world's top 10, who came out publicly in July 2022? Given same-sex relationships in Mohammed bin Salman's nation are punishable by the death penalty under a system of Sharia law, it is a significant grey area. The WTA would not comment directly on the issue to Telegraph Sport, clarifying that the scheme would simply be available to 'any eligible players'.
Tennis can skirt around the subject as much as it likes, but the jarring reality is this: the Saudi state stumping up the cash to fund players' maternity leave in an attempt to sanitise its public image and distract from its own human-rights abuses is deeply uncomfortable.