Cost of Touring on the Professional Tennis Tour

Pursuing a career as a professional tennis player requires €21,600 – €63,600+ annually, depending on a few factors.

These factors include duration & frequency of training, ability to travel, number of tournaments played, and expertise of the coach. The coach’s level of expertise impacts overall cost of touring, quality of player development, and career progress. Therefore, picking a quality coach becomes an important financial decision.

The following estimate assumes that:

the season lasts 48 weeks
the athlete competes in 1 ITF tournament (5 days/week) per month
the coach’s level of expertise is average
all training variables are covered

Cost of Touring: Total Annual Expenses

Annual Cost of Touring on the Professional Tennis Circuit
Expenses on Tour		Expenses at Home		Total Expenses
No Coaching	Incl. Coaching	Limited Training	Comprehensive Training	Minimum	Maximum
€9,600	€15,600+	€12,000	€48,000+	€21,600	€63,600+

Cost of Touring: Expenses on Tour

The biggest cost of touring is travel & hospitality. Therefore you want to decide where you want to play. You want to go where there are a lot of tournaments and distances to travel are not so far. So taking a closer look at the tournament calendar makes sense.

Many talented tennis players want to compete on the professional tour in pursuit of a successful career, but competing on tour isn’t cheap:

€160+/day for player + 1 (e.g. parent, coach) without coaching
€260+/day including coaching

Generally speaking Europe is a good place to play because there are a lot of tournament throughout the year and most of the tournaments can be reached by car; within 8-10 hours you can get basically anywhere in Europe.

On the other hand competition in Europe is much stiffer but if you are really serious about becoming a professional tennis player, coming to Europe in the summer is a serious consideration.

Playing conditions are generally good, you get to play on clay courts and level of play is high because you could be facing Nr.1 players from so many different countries in Europe; e.g. Croatia, France, Italy, Spain, Germany and so forth, which also provides you with a more realistic view of your real capabilities.

Many tennis players often travel to places like Asia or Africa and stay there for a few weeks in order to gain points and improve their ranking since competition is usually easier.

Here in Sham El Sheikh for instance you can play more than 20 tournaments each weekend without any travelling. The downside is that you are “stuck” in one place and eating the same foods for 3 weeks can be challenging.

On tour, the main contributing cost factors are:

Travel
Hospitality
Food & Beverages
Miscellaneous (e.g. stringing, court fee, massage)
Coaching (if applicable)

On average, one can expect to stay 5 days at a given tournament week. Therefore, the weekly costs are €800 – €1300+, depending if coaching is accounted for or not. If the athlete plays 1 ITF tournament/month (12 annually) then the annual costs are €9,600 – €15,600+, respectively.

Cost of Touring: Expenses at Home

Expenses for training at home can range anywhere from €50 – €200+/day, depending on duration and frequency of overall training variables, which include:

Tennis training
Practice matches
Strength & conditioning
Mental training
Nutrition
Physical rehab (e.g. massages)
Equipment

On average, one can expect to practice 5 days/week. Therefore, the weekly costs can range from €250 – €1,000+. Due to vacation/injury time it is unrealistic for athletes to practice the entire year (52 weeks); 48 weeks are more realistic. Therefore, annual costs are €12,000 – €48,000+.

Forming a Team

It also makes a lot of sense to travel in a team: 2 players, 1 coach works pretty well. Reason being is that the cost of touring per player decreases, the players can play doubles and practice together, have more fun socially and can continue to practice with their coach while being on tour, which allows for continuous improvements.

Also, finding other good players for practice matches is easy since everybody is looking to play a few sets here and there.

As you can see there are many options available, each having their own advantages and disadvantages. At the end of the day you have to decide for yourself what suits you the best but the most important aspect is that you have a certain level of play and abilities that allow you to win matches at the ITF Future level.

Training Zone

In this section we provide you with some workouts you may be interested in to optimize your training: