The Ladies’s Tennis Affiliation has introduced a long-term partnership with Mercedes-Benz which has the potential to be the biggest in ladies’s sport.

The German automobile producer will turn out to be the premier companion of the WTA and pour $50m (£37.5m) per yr into ladies’s tennis for as much as 10 years.

The deal has been described because the “most vital” within the WTA’s historical past, and will finally be value as much as half a billion {dollars} (£375m).

The Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League in America signed a $240m (£180m) four-year media rights deal in November 2023, whereas Nike has invested $350m (£262m) throughout a number of ladies’s soccer leagues.

Introduced on Wednesday, the WTA deal will assist with the tour’s dedication to have equal prize cash at occasions the place each women and men function by 2027 and at non-combined occasions by 2033.

Equal prize cash was one of many key targets when the WTA was based in 1973.

American tennis nice Billie Jean King, who based the WTA and was its first president, stated the deal exhibits the tour “continues to cleared the path in ladies’s sport”.

“Our mission assertion after we based the WTA was that any woman born on this world, if she was adequate, would have a spot to compete, be revered and make a dwelling enjoying tennis,” King instructed BBC Sport.

“This can be a actual partnership and Mercedes are in it for the long run.

“Seeing a model like that stand with us sends a message that echoes far past tennis.”