What was the most viewed tennis match ever? Given the increased influence of social media, you might think that this would be a fairly recent game. But a survey in 2024, updated in April this year, showed that the most watched game by a country mile was between a 55-year-old sexist, and a 29-year-old who was yet to come out, and to become an icon of the women’s movement. In September 1973, 50 million live viewers in the US and over 90 million on international TV watched Billie Jean King defeat Bobby Riggs.
Bobby Riggs had won Wimbledon in 1939. By 1973, he was a sexist provocateur, claiming that “women belong in the bedroom and kitchen, in that order”, and that women’s tennis “stinks…. you can see some pretty legs but it’s night and day compared to the men’s game.” He challenged the leading women’s tennis star Billie Jean King to a game, saying: “I’ll tell you why I’ll win. She’s a woman, and they don’t have the emotional stability.”
King was highly politicised, and would come out as a lesbian in 1981. She initially ignored Riggs’ bluster, but then said: “I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn’t win that match. It would ruin the women’s [tennis] tour and affect all women’s self-esteem.” She won the game in straight sets. Shortly afterwards, the U.S. Open offered equal prize money to its men’s and women’s champions. Other tournaments followed, the last being Wimbledon in 2007.
King’s victory was as much a sign of what was happening outside tennis as on the court. At the beginning of the same year, Roe v. Wade had finally legalised abortion in the USA. In the previous year, the Title IX law was passed, which said that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program.” Title IX was impossible without a radical street movement for women’s and other rights.
King’s stance against sexism is part of a proud tradition of political athletes from Muhammad Ali refusing to fight in the Vietnam War to Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. To those who say we should not mix sport and politics, sport has always been political. King proudly revealed that she had undergone an abortion, and found it degrading that the procedure was only possible with her husband’s approval. We should celebrate her, and other athletes who made it clear that sport is part of our society and requires the same resistance.
