In 1970, the champion of one American tournament was paid twelve thousand five
hundred dollars. The women's champion of the same tournament, on the same courts,
in the same fortnight, was paid fifteen hundred.
Three years later, a fifty-five-year-old man who had won Wimbledon before the
Second World War played a twenty-nine-year-old woman in the Houston Astrodome
for a hundred thousand dollars, winner take all. Thirty thousand people watched
from the stands and around ninety million more on television. She won in straight
sets and took the whole purse, because those were the terms.
Forty years after that, a retired golf instructor told ESPN that the match had
been bought and paid for before it started. There is no document, no recording
and no second witness — and every man he named was already dead when he said it.
This film is not about the mob. It is about the money the match was actually for,
and about how one story that cannot be checked became the version people repeat.
WHAT THIS FILM DOES NOT CLAIM
It does not settle whether Bobby Riggs threw the match — that cannot be settled,
and pretending otherwise would be the very thing the film criticises. It does not
call Hal Shaw a liar. It says which parts of his account can be checked, and which
cannot.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Houston, 20 September 1973
0:59 A game patented before the telephone
2:10 1968: the sport admits it is a business
3:07 Twenty-four
3:54 What a fortnight is worth in 2026
4:51 Eight to one
5:39 Nine one-dollar contracts
6:38 Ten thousand and twenty-five thousand
7:35 Billie Jean King
9:02 Bobby Riggs
10:17 The Astrodome
11:16 August 2013: the claim
12:39 What can be checked
14:08 Two different claims
15:16 Why this version stuck
16:16 What can be counted
17:20 Credits
SOURCES
· 2026 prize money — US Open $108M total, $5.5M to each singles champion, $2.8M
runner-up, $140,000 for a first-round loss; Wimbledon £64.2M and £3.6M;
Australian Open A$111.5M and A$4.15M; Roland Garros €61.7M and €2.8M. All four
pay men and women the same for the same round.
· Wingfield's patent on a lawn game: 1874. Bell filed for the telephone on
14 February 1876; patent no. 174,465 granted 7 March 1876. The first Wimbledon
championship: 1877.
· 1970, Pacific Southwest Open — $12,500 to the men's champion, $1,500 to the
women's. USTA, International Tennis Hall of Fame.
· 23 September 1970, Houston — the "Original 9", one-dollar contracts with Gladys
Heldman, a $7,500 purse, the players suspended by the federation. USTA and the
Hall of Fame (joint induction of the Original 9, 2021).
· 1971 — first woman in any sport to earn more than $100,000 in a season;
$117,000, the threshold passed on 27 September 1971 in Phoenix.
· US Open 1972 and 1973 — $10,000 against $25,000, then equal $25,000 in 1973,
the difference underwritten by a sponsor. AP wire, reprinted widely.
· 2007 — Wimbledon and Roland Garros equalise; Venus Williams is the first to
collect an equal cheque (£700,000).
· Billie Jean King — born 22 November 1943 in Long Beach; 39 Grand Slam titles
(12 singles, 16 doubles, 11 mixed); Sports Illustrated Sportsperson of the Year
1972, the first woman; co-founder of the WTA, 1973.
· Bobby Riggs — Wimbledon 1939: singles, doubles (with Elwood Cooke) and mixed
(with Alice Marble) in one fortnight. Died 1995.
· 13 May 1973 — Riggs beats Margaret Court 6–2, 6–1.
· 20 September 1973 — Astrodome, 30,472 in the stands, around 90 million watching
on television, $100,000 winner take all, 6–4, 6–3, 6–3.
· August 2013 — ESPN Outside the Lines, "The Match Maker" by Don Van Natta Jr.
Dates of death — Santo Trafficante Jr., 19 March 1987; Carlos Marcello,
3 March 1993; Frank Ragano, 13 May 1998; Bobby Riggs, 1995. All before the
2013 publication.
· The denials — ESPN, "An iconic moment, with an asterisk?": Billie Jean King,
Riggs's friend Lornie Kuhle, promoter Jerry Perenchio, lawyer Robert Grey
Johnson. Ragano's son also disputed the account.
· The competing accounts — Larry Riggs (son) thought a deliberate loss set up
a rematch more likely than mob money; Gene Mako told Riggs's biographer
Tom LeCompte ("The Last Sure Thing", 2003) that vanity was the likelier motive.
These are separate claims from the mob story and the film keeps them separate.
MUSIC
Beyond the Lows — The Whole Other
