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September 20th, 1973: Battle of the Sexes

Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in a tennis match that alters the course of modern athletics and sets the stage for the ascendance of women in sports.

by Adam Slocum

September 20, 2023

Getty Images, NSM Illustration

In the summer of 1972, the US Federal Government passed Title IX, which stated: “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 or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

This 37-word piece of legislation would quietly set the stage for a revolution in women’s sports for decades to follow, since it meant that college athletic programs were required to treat their men’s and women’s teams equally. While this law was being passed, women’s tennis, led by Billie Jean King, was going through its own transformation. At the beginning of the 1970’s, the disparity in prize money was only getting worse. The catalyst for the WTA’s predecessor, the Virginia Slims Tour, was the 12:1 ratio in prize money for the male and female winners of the Pacific Northwest tour.

Billie Jean King raises the trophy after beating Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the Sexes", Getty Images

TIME FOR A CHANGE

1973 was a watershed year for women’s tennis. That June, in the name of gender equality, Billie Jean King had founded the WTA, combining all of women’s professional tennis under one umbrella. However, the equality movement in tennis quickly met a challenge—former #1-ranked men’s player, Bobby Riggs, challenged Billie Jean King to a match, saying that “women’s tennis is so far beneath men’s tennis, that’s what makes the contest with a 55-year-old man the greatest contest of all time.” Billie Jean King turned down Riggs’ initial request, so instead he defeated Margaret Court (6-2, 6-1) in what came to be known as the “Mother’s Day Massacre.” Court’s loss convinced King of the need to play Riggs to redeem women’s tennis, despite her worry that if she lost it would be a devastating setback.

Prior to King’s match with Riggs, women’s tennis received a tremendous vote of confidence. Held just a few weeks prior to their historic “Battle of the Sexes” showdown in the Houston Astrodome, the USTA decided that the 1973 US Open in NYC would be the first Grand Slam to offer equal prize money to both men and women. (Incidentally, Australian Margaret Court would go on to win her 24th and final Grand Slam singles title that year, establishing her as the undisputed leader in Grand Slam singles titles (men’s or women’s) up until the recently-contested 2023 US Open, when Novak Djokovic would tie that mark.)

The “Battle of the Sexes” was staged as a spectacle from the start with a $100,000 winner-take-all-purse, 4 times more than the US Open had paid its singles winners, John Newcombe and Margaret Court, earlier that month. When King entered the Astrodome on September 20, 1973, she was on a throne carried aloft by shirtless men while Riggs was pulled into the stadium by a group of female models.

Billie Jean prepares to serve in the biggest match of her life, AP

After falling behind in the first set, King came back to win in straight sets (6-4, 6-3, 6-3). With the future of women’s tennis and even the feminist movement on the line, King triumphed in front of 30,472 fans (the largest crowd ever to watch a tennis match in the US to this day) and 90 million people watching on TV worldwide. King described the feeling of winning as “relief” because she knew that if she had lost, she would have set her cause back by 50 years.

THE LEGEND LIVES ON

Now, exactly 50 years later, her legacy is greater than ever. Even the tennis center where the US Open is held has been named in her honor: the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center was introduced in 2006. Her 1973 victory was a crucial inflection point in the new age of Title IX: she proved that women athletes were skilled and worthy of attention, recognition, and support, leading to the ascendance of women’s athletics in general.

Billie Jean’s victory (together with Title IX), is often credited with sparking an upward trend in women’s sports participation, and for empowering women to advocate for equality, including equal pay. By 2007, with Venus Williams picking up the mantle of gender equality from Billie Jean, all four Grand Slam tournaments elected to provide equal prize money to men and women. Equal pay has also been adopted recently by the US Soccer Federation with the men’s and women’s World Cup teams sharing equal pay for their respective tournaments. Needless to say, we all owe a debt of gratitude to Billie Jean, her Battle of the Sexes victory, and the ongoing work of her Women’s Sports Foundation for closing the gender gap and making the ideals of Title IX a reality.

NATIONAL SPORTS MUSEUM IN NYC

That is why we are creating the National Sports Museum (NSM) in New York City: to celebrate the essence of sports, particularly its ability to bring us together as a nation. With all that divides us in this world, we need to celebrate the phenomenon of sports, which has the unique power to bring us together, lift us up, and strengthen bonds – personally, communally, societally, and culturally.