Billie Jean King & Andy Murray on Gender Equality in Tennis

ANDY MURRAY, THREE-TIME GRAND SLAM WINNER: This is something that obviously Billie Jean has been — well, wanting to happen for 40, 50 years. You know, she is the one that had the vision for all of this, and, you know, we need to remember that. But I think it’s great if more of the male players are seeing it as a positive step for the sport. I think we have a very unique sport in that we have the men and the women competing at the biggest competitions together. That doesn’t really happen in any of the other global sports, and I see that as a big positive. We have equal prize money at those events, which I think is fantastic and I think that’s very attractive to sponsors, to the audience. We have pretty much a 50/50 kind of audience split between men and women, which, again, is rare across sports. And I think all of these things are things that we should be celebrating in the sport. And, you know, sometimes they aren’t and there’s a lot of in-fighting that goes on with these things and I don’t think that should be the case. There’s obviously going to be some issues, potentially with a merger, as well, but, you know, it is definitely I think a step in the right direction to start these conversations.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, you obviously agree with it. Some of the other top tennis players on the male side do too, Rafael Nadal. But Nick Kyrgios opposes it. I want to ask you, Billie Jean, because obviously I wanted to get you on this. You have spent your whole career, you know, blazing that trail for equality, and you did start out wanting both tours to somehow get together. Are you pleased that this is happening now? Do you see just opportunity or any pitfalls? How do you view this floating publicly by Roger Federer, of something you have been lobbying for, for decades?

BILLIE JEAN KING, FORMER TENNIS CHAMPION, FOUNDER, WOMEN’S TENNIS ASSOCIATION: Well, I’m thrilled that Roger brought it because when top male players bring something up, people listen. And I did have a chance to talk with Roger and we talked about it and he said the reason he even thought about this was because he finally had some space and time to reflect and think about the sport. But what tennis people have to understand, this isn’t — we need to get along and we need — we’re much stronger, much stronger, as Andy said, if we’re together, from sponsorship, to opportunities and we can grow. But what we have to understand is we have to stay together as a sport. Because we’re not competing within our sport like a lot of tennis people think. Our job is to be together. So, we need to compete against the other entertainment and other sports. I don’t think people realize, you know, we are in this business. And so, I think it’s very important that we are together, that we’re not an acquisition. The WTO would not be an acquisition. You know, would be a full partner in this drive to make our sport better and more valuable.