Women's champion Billy Jean King beat a former men's champion in the biggest tennis match ever played
He was 55 and King was 29, at the top of her game, and had just won her fifth Wimbledon singles title.So it was set: Sept. 20, 1973, at the then-palatial Houston Astrodome, national TV, prime time, with bombastic sports broadcaster Howard Cosell mike-side.
The match had gone viral in the days before social media, ESPN, and general 24/7 media bombardment. The match was all anybody talked about, talk shows hummed with opinions. The broadcast drew 50 million people in the U.S. and an estimated 90 million more, worldwide, still the most to watch a tennis match and one of the most-watched television sports events of all time.
King played along with the circus-like atmosphere tinged with cringe-inducing 1970s humor, making her entrance on a chair borne by scantily-clad male athletes from nearby Rice University; Riggs’ “chauvinist-pig” persona was on full display. He entered riding a rickshaw drawn by scantily clad females, who along with Riggs all wore shirts sponsored by the candy bar “Sugar Daddy,” a pioneering moment in sports marketing.
But the hoopla meant nothing once the two players stepped onto the court. King was all business and methodically chopped Riggs up and won going away 6-4. 6-3, 6-3. She took the then-staggering prize of $100,000.“The Battle of the Sexes gave women’s tennis, and women athletes, an unprecedented global platform,” King told the International Tennis Hall of Fame .
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