Sports and Appearance Money….discussions about appearance money are anyway never discussed in the public domain, which is what makes this such a disgusting breach of ethical norms.
It is legal for players on the ATP and WTA Tours to accept appearance money; however, golfers on the PGA Tour cannot, although they can accept appearance money on European PGA Tour and other Tours. Erne Els is playing golf in India currently and he has not gone just for the opportunity to win prize money and if you look deeper, you will find that top golfers demand and are paid appearance money. Andre Agassi is reported to have received around $1 million to play tennis in Middle East. Tiger Woods now commands around $4 million to play in Middle East and also demands a private jet to fly him both ways. Golfer Greg Norman used to charge $200,000 - $250,000 as appearance money in mid 1990s plus $50,000 for fuel for his private jet.
Is discussing “appearance money” in print media a taboo subject?
If it is, then many golf magazines, American newspapers and newspapers in other countries have been printing something terrible because if you scan these print media, you will find plenty of discussion about the amount of money players demand to participate in tournaments.
I subscribe to two golf magazines and there is always a snippet of how much golfers are getting paid to show up at PGA tournaments. I repeat, it is illegal to get paid appearance money on PGA Tour, but many top golfers (Tiger is in another league by himself) are paid upwards of $100,000 to hobnob with rich people at breakfast at corporate tents although the PGA Tour does not pay them for participating in the tournament. The US Open Golf was held in my city a few years back and the news media published the going rate of these fees charged by certain golfers, including Vijay Singh.
Who made up the rule that writing about appearance money in newspapers is unethical?
Writing about it is not unethical. Players don’t want to talk about it, and the tournament organizers want to keep the amount of money paid a secret because many sports fans believe that such money transactions do not occur. The biggest losers are often the fans because occasionally the players hold the tournaments ransom with their demands, the ticket prices at tournaments go up sometimes, and money that could be used for other purposes sometimes end up being used elsewhere.
Is appearance money always good for sports?
We have seen Nadal not only get paid to play in Chennai, but has demanded wild card for his friend. The wild card could have gone to a more deserving player. Tiger Woods was paid appearance money to play in New Zealand few years back and the weekly tournament ticket prices went up to $205 from $20 the previous year and when the weather turned bad and the public stayed away because of it, the New Zealand Open suffered a financial loss and the organizers were trying to pay off the debt for the next few years.
Appearance Money, India and Sports-India
Appearance money may be a new topic in the tennis forum of Sports-India, but we have discussed about it in the golf forum in the past three or four years or perhaps more.
It is not the first time that the subject of appearance money has been raised in Indian print media. The Economic Times wrote about it a year back and Leander’s appearance money at Chennai Open was also reported in other newspapers. Do we have a double standard here? Did anyone raise the issue of unethical behavior by the press then?
Jay asserted that the organizers of Bangalore Open released the information about Sania’s appearance money to Sukhwant, but retracted his statement when Sukhwant wrote in the forum that the organizers did not leak the information and Jay later added that this information jived with "that Sunder Raju initially had said to HT that there was no appearance money issue".
Some people are totally convinced that the Bangalore Open organizers are the guilty party, yet I have not seen any evidence that proves their guilt. I do not know who is guilty, or if anyone is guilty at all. Playing the appearance money game is a business deal between two parties and sometimes the deal falls through.
May be, the Bangalore Open organizers will regret their decision of not being able to rope in Sania this year; perhaps, Sania may find out that her asking price is not what organizers in India can afford.
Who knows whether my ramblings make any sense, even to me?
and he got another photo for the ad and he paid none of the models a single penny. 
