The breakdown of the prize monies for the DavNotch and VEMP Open competitions scheduled to commence on Monday, 4 July, 2025, is generating unpleasant reactions from tennis players.
Recall that the Nigeria Tennis Federation (NTF) recently announced the commencement of three weeks of national competitions from 4-26 July, 2025, starting with the VEMP Open.
Consequently, when the breakdown of the prize monies was made available to the players, it generated a lot of complaints from the players who lamented bitterly.
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The prize money breakdown obtained by Nigeria Tennis Live showed that the first round losers in the DavNotch event (which looks like a draw of 32 players) will go home with N35,000; the second round losers take home N60,000 just as the quarterfinalists get to get a reward of N100,000 each.
For semis losers, the prize money is N175,000 while the runner up in the final gets N295,000. The winner of the Men’s Singles event gets N500,000 as prize money.
Below is the breakdown of the prize money for the DavNotch Open as obtained by our correspondent:
The players seem even more aggrieved about the prize money breakdown for the VEMP Open Championship as the event looks to have a draw of 64 module, without prize money being allocated to the first round losers.
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Below is the breakdown of the prize money for the VEMP Open event as obtained by Nigeria Tennis Live:
Some of the players who spoke to Nigeria Tennis Live expressed their disappointment at the recent development, stating that they expected the prize monies to at least be improved on.
“Maybe they should just join both (DavNotch & VEMP) together and make it one competition, because what is this prize money?
“If somebody is coming from Lagos, for instance, the prize money does not even cover for one way transport if the person loses in the first round, what then is the point of the competition?” one of the players said angrily.
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Another player who preferred anonymity, was quite critical of the NTF for asking them to pay N5,000 as registration fee, a significant N3,000 increase from the last time they played the tournament, without increasing their earnings.
The player said: “Now that they’ve increased the amount we’re meant to pay as entry fee, why are they not increasing the prize money, for God’s sakes?
“We want tournaments and we are grateful to the sponsors, but how do we earn peanuts from putting in all the efforts, especially traveling?”
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Another player who did not want to comment, insisted that “the players’ representative on the NTF board is our spokesperson, I really want to know what he has to say about this because I’m sure he knows that this does not look good for players”.
“Tennis Live, even if you’re the one earning this amount after putting in all the efforts, won’t you be frustrated?” another player queried while directing his question at our correspondent.
The preliminaries of the VEMP Open is expected to serve off on Friday, 4 July, 2025, inside the tennis section of the National Stadium, Abuja.
Nigeria Tennis Live will bring our readers updated on the latest developments concerning the competition as they unfold.
