Facing gross pay disparities and fractured representation, Billie Jean King brought together 63 professional women players in London to form the Women's Tennis Association just before Wimbledon. The unified body gave female players collective bargaining power for the first time, laying groundwork for equal prize money at major tournaments and cementing King's legacy as a pioneer of sports equity.
Before 1973, women's professional tennis was a fractured, underpaid affair. Male champions routinely earned several times what their female counterparts took home at the same tournaments, and women players had no unified body to negotiate or advocate collectively. Billie Jean King, already a multiple Grand Slam champion and outspoken advocate, decided fragmentation was the enemy.
On June 28, 1973, King gathered 63 women professional players in a London hotel room days before Wimbledon began, and in a single meeting they founded the Women's Tennis Association, electing King as its first president. It was an audacious act of solidarity in a sport that had long pitted individual players against each other for scarce sponsorship and prize money.
The timing was pointed: later that same year, King would defeat Bobby Riggs in the widely watched 'Battle of the Sexes' exhibition match, but the WTA's founding was the quieter, more structural achievement. Within months, the U.S. Open became the first major to offer equal prize money to men and women, in part due to pressure King and the new organization applied. The WTA remains the governing body of women's professional tennis today, a direct descendant of that hotel room meeting.
Key people: Billie Jean King