Tennis is doing what it does each 10-15 years or so — having a reckoning with its countless schedule, its nonsensical governing construction, and a aggressive format that even religious followers wrestle to grasp.
The game is performed internationally, with nations on each continent besides Antarctica producing prime gamers. No main sport integrates women and men extra efficiently, or has come as near pay equality, although there may be work to be completed on these fronts. Almost day-after-day of the yr, an attractive skilled match unfolds someplace on the planet.
And but, the practically unanimous opinion of everybody concerned within the sport — its leaders, its gamers, event organizers, sponsors, media executives, coaches — is that skilled tennis is damaged, a structural mess that exhausts its gamers, cannibalizes its enterprise with dueling occasions and exists in a relentless state of civil struggle amongst its alphabet soup of governing our bodies. There are seven of them, or possibly 9 or 10, relying on who’s doing the counting.
“Such a tremendous sport and so screwed up,” mentioned Pam Shriver, the previous star participant who’s now a commentator and a coach.
Marketa Vondrousova celebrates successful Wimbledon (Glyn Kirk/AFP through Getty Pictures)
“I can’t even get quoted about it anymore with out utilizing unhealthy language,” mentioned one other former participant who has been concerned in tennis for many years. She was proper. She couldn’t.
Phil de Picciotto, the chief government and founding father of Octagon, the sports activities advertising and marketing agency with deep roots in skilled tennis, has been in convention rooms full of leaders of the game making an attempt to repair it on and off for greater than 30 years. What usually occurs, he mentioned, is that everybody gravitates towards one among two reverse poles.
At one finish are those that favor creating probably the most gamers, which requires giving as many individuals as attainable a possibility to progress with tournaments on a regular basis all around the world. On the different finish is the Grand Slams – singular occasions that focus on the elite of the elite and appeal to probably the most informal of sports activities followers.
“Each are actually vital,” de Picciotto mentioned. “Individuals can undertake each of these bookends they usually do. The battleground turns into every thing in between.”
Because the 2024 tennis season will get underway in Australia, what would possibly make this reckoning totally different from all of the earlier reckonings is the close to unanimity on what tennis wants to repair itself. Ask practically anybody concerned in practically any aspect of the game tips on how to repair it, which we did, and the identical reply virtually at all times comes again: a clearly outlined, premium tennis tour constructed across the sport’s most dear legacy occasions and its greatest gamers that’s straightforward to comply with, contains each women and men and doesn’t overtax stars.
Even those that must be in opposition to that generally prescribed answer as a result of there’s a likelihood it would hurt their investments — specifically the homeowners of small and mid-sized tournaments — basically agree that is what tennis wants. They’re sports activities executives they usually perceive that almost each different profitable sport makes use of some model of that very same formulation.
Nobody is aware of precisely tips on how to handle all the small print. What jobs and occasions to remove. The right way to unwind all of the conflicting contracts. The algorithm to divvy up the loot from a mixed premium tour in order that the lesser competitions which might be important for the game’s improvement don’t grow to be extinct stays a piece in progress — and possibly at all times shall be.
Djokovic now performs fewer tournaments (Matthew Stockman/Getty Pictures)
Tennis has tried to create variations of this earlier than, solely to have the plans crumble resulting from battles over territory, energy and cash. This time, veterans of the game say, it feels totally different, a results of each want and necessity, as leaders face a mixture of inner and exterior stress to alter or be modified.
Fixing every thing in tennis in a single fell swoop could also be past anybody’s attain, however good, skilled individuals like John Morris, who represents a number of prime gamers for his firm, 72 Sports activities Group, and is a longtime tennis government, say establishing a premier tour would signify a major begin.
“If this could occur,” Morris mentioned, “numerous the issues that must be corrected could be corrected.”
How we received right here
The tennis world comes collectively annually at Wimbledon, the oldest and most prestigious event within the sport.
Because the tennis unfolds on the grass courts, the game’s movers and shakers, together with leaders of the excursions, the 4 Grand Slams, the Worldwide Tennis Federation, and scores of media executives, brokers and company leaders, minimize offers over glasses of Champagne and catered lunches, cocktail hours and dinners inside the company suites on the All England Garden Tennis Membership and the stately properties on the hilly streets close by.
That is the place, in early July, phrase started to flow into that Andrea Gaudenzi, the previous participant who’s the chairman of the lads’s circuit, the ATP Tour, was on the verge of an enormous one. Gaudenzi was closing in on a cope with Saudi Arabia to ship a prime event to the dominion as quickly as January 2025.
Saudi Arabia had upended golf the earlier yr by launching a rival tour. Gaudenzi needed to do every thing in his energy to stop that from taking place in tennis.
Inviting the Saudis into the clubby higher echelon of the sport by permitting them to launch a serious new occasion appeared like the perfect technique. A prime Saudi occasion at first of the yr would possible doom the collection of small and mid-sized tournaments in Australia and New Zealand throughout these weeks, however they weren’t Gaudenzi’s precedence. Placating the Saudis was.
Tournaments like Madrid, the place Sabalenka received this yr, could be a part of a premier tour (Julian Finney/Getty Pictures)
Then phrase of the deal made its solution to Craig Tiley, the chief of Tennis Australia. Tiley and Tennis Australia’s different leaders have been staying in a good-looking brick house on a quiet block between the All England Membership and Wimbledon Village. From his perch a couple of streets from the event, Tiley, a South African who performed professionally earlier than changing into a prime faculty coach within the U.S. and evolving into a number one tennis government, swung into motion.
If Gaudenzi was going to deal with key occasions of Tennis Australia’s annual “summer time of tennis” as collateral injury, Tiley, who declined to be interviewed for this story, was going proper again at him.
Lengthy acknowledged as among the many most revolutionary minds in tennis, Tiley started working the telephones and the ability facilities at Wimbledon to get the leaders of the opposite three Grand Slams to assist his effort to cleave the highest tournaments from males’s and ladies’s excursions, referred to as the “Masters” and “1,000s” to launch the premium tennis circuit that so many within the sport craved.
Via the summer time and fall, Tiley’s push for a tennis tour that resembled Components One continued to achieve momentum, particularly inside the Skilled Tennis Gamers Affiliation (PTPA), the nascent gamers group that Novak Djokovic co-founded three years in the past. A proper proposal is anticipated within the coming weeks.
Why now could be totally different
“We’re nearer than we ever have been,” mentioned one longtime business government concerned with the discussions, each this yr and up to now. Like a number of others, he requested anonymity as a result of he was not approved to disclose particulars of inner discussions.
He then defined why he was optimistic that change was on the way in which.
“You have got exterior forces within the type of Saudi Arabia and the PTPA that you just didn’t have earlier than.”
Let’s unpack that.
LIV Golf modified every thing.
When Saudi Arabia launched its quest final yr to upend skilled golf by paying prime gamers a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars} to compete on a brand new rival tour, leaders of the organizations which have managed skilled tennis for the final half-century knew their supremacy might quickly be below risk.
Tennis gamers obtain roughly 1 / 4 of the game’s revenues, in contrast with about 50 per cent in main workforce sports activities. It could not take a lot for a deep-pocketed investor to supply the perfect ones a higher-paying, much less demanding different.
Buenos Aires, the place Alcaraz received, might find yourself outdoors the highest tour (Luis Robayo/AFP through Getty Pictures)
Additionally, throughout the previous three years, the PTPA has grown into one thing the game has by no means had — a viable and well-financed impartial platform for gamers to assault the established order.
The boys’s and ladies’s excursions, the WTA and the ATP, have largely handled the PTPA as an outdoor agitator. In October, Steve Simon, the chief government of the WTA Tour, refused to permit a PTPA consultant to participate in a gathering between him and the highest 20 gamers, greater than half of whom are members of the PTPA.
The Grand Slams took one other tack, utilizing the PTPA to work with gamers to attempt to meet their office wants. That has helped set up a respectful management-labor dynamic and a stage of belief within the Grand Slams as they work to alter the aggressive construction of the game.
“A gamers affiliation is right here now they usually perceive that as one thing that must be accepted,” Vasek Pospisil, a veteran participant from Canada and a founding member of the PTPA, mentioned of the Grand Slams. “They need the gamers to have a seat on the desk.”
It additionally helps that the Grand Slams share more cash with the gamers than the common tour occasions.
Lastly, the Grand Slams realized in 2022 that they don’t want the excursions. The excursions withheld rankings factors from Wimbledon final yr when the All England Membership and the Garden Tennis Affiliation, which oversees tennis in Nice Britain, refused to permit gamers from Belarus and Russia to take part as a punishment for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The remainder of the gamers got here anyway. Stadiums have been packed. Tv rankings remained sky-high. Nobody actually cared whether or not gamers acquired rating factors.
What would tennis appear to be below the brand new framework?
The main points are nonetheless being labored out, however the broad define is constructed round a premier tour for top-level gamers — say, roughly the highest 100.
They’d play no less than the 14 greatest tournaments on the schedule: the Grand Slams, the 10-12 greatest and most profitable tour occasions, and the 2 tour finals. They might drop down and play a couple of smaller tournaments, however something that occurs in these tournaments is separate from the principle tour.
The premier occasions would come with Wimbledon, the U.S., Australian and French Opens; combined occasions in Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid, Rome, Toronto/Montreal, and Cincinnati; males’s tournaments in Monte Carlo, Paris and Shanghai; Ladies’s occasions in Dubai, Doha and Beijing. Different prime candidates for inclusion would come with occasions in Washington D.C., Tokyo, and probably the lads’s occasion in Beijing, since they’re world capitals.
All the opposite occasions could be a part of a developmental tour, with gamers outdoors the highest 100 competing to make the premier tour. Greater-ranked gamers who want matches or wish to accumulate an look charge might play in a couple of of these occasions annually, however the outcomes wouldn’t rely towards the premier tour standings and rankings.
A Saudi masters would put tournaments akin to Auckland below risk (Michael Bradley/AFP through Getty Pictures)
The tour could be managed by a board with representatives of the Grand Slams, the opposite large tournaments, and representatives of the ATP and the WTA. The gamers would sit on the labor aspect of the negotiating desk and collectively cut price for his or her share of the revenues as they do in different profitable sports activities.
It’s unclear how the Worldwide Tennis Federation, which controls worldwide workforce competitions just like the Davis Cup, the Billie Jean King Cup and the Olympic tournaments, would match into this construction, if in any respect. That mentioned, the ITF is reexamining the format of its competitions proper now and must get its personal home so as first.
Why does a premier tour have a lot assist?
Everybody in tennis believes the season is simply too lengthy and disparate. It’s.
It lasts 11 months and is inconceivable to handle, with the seven totally different governing our bodies consistently preventing with each other concerning the schedule. It’s also too difficult for lay followers to maintain monitor of.
“It’s like having a calendar with seven totally different discussions in seven totally different rooms,” Gaudenzi mentioned in November throughout a gathering with a small group of journalists in Italy. “I’m making an attempt to persuade all people we’re managing one product. We’re all a part of the identical ebook. We’d write totally different chapters, however we’re a part of the identical ebook and we are able to’t promote totally different chapters in numerous bookstores.”
Promoting only one “ebook”, to make use of Gaudenzi’s metaphor, would make the game easier to comply with and sure drive up the worth for media rights and sponsorships. Proper now, tournaments and the totally different governing our bodies compete with each other. That drives down costs since consumers can play one off in opposition to the opposite. Bundling a group of premier tournaments, promoting them collectively and partnering with networks devoted to exploiting all of the content material the game produces as a substitute of simply the ultimate rounds would possible drive up funding considerably.
That might be a boon to organizers of the highest tournaments and to gamers. They wish to play much less, earn more cash and remove any incentive to play each week.
“Proper now the system is structured in order that if I don’t play each week I can’t get to the rating I would like,” Pospisil mentioned. “To go up the rankings, you’ve received to play continuous.”
Raemon Sluiter, a veteran coach, mentioned the start of Elina Svitolina’s first little one final yr gave the star from Ukraine a bonus — earlier than she returned, she lastly had the chance to apply for greater than two months straight, far longer than the standard gruelling schedule permits. High tennis gamers usually get pleasure from an low season that lasts about two weeks, which isn’t sufficient time to make any important adjustments. A slimmed-down tour might make an enormous distinction.
The winners
“It is vitally good to be a 1,000 occasion proper now,” mentioned a prime government at an organization that owns one.
Certainly, the most important tournaments in tennis outdoors the Grand Slams are the belles of the ball in the mean time. Tiley and the Grand Slams need them for his or her premier tour. The ATP and the WTA wish to keep their associations with these historic tour stops, akin to Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid and Rome, so that they aren’t relegated to working the tennis minor leagues.
Additionally, take into account a tennis investor like Ben Navarro, who just lately bought the Cincinnati Masters for roughly $300million. If Cincinnati lands a spot on the premier tour, his occasion is now part of the identical circuit and enterprise operation as Wimbledon moderately than, say, Delray Seashore. Not unhealthy.
The identical goes for CVC Capital Companions, the personal fairness agency that purchased a 20 per cent stake within the WTA Tour in 2023 for $150million. If the WTA can negotiate an possession stake and a seat on the board within the premier tour, CVC is now in enterprise with the most important occasions within the sport.
The losers — however maybe not a lot
The small and medium-sized tournaments, competitions in locations like Dallas, Basel, and Buenos Aires, are going to have a tough time swallowing the prospect of relegation to the minor leagues. They’ve spent thousands and thousands of {dollars} on license agreements to be part of the ATP and the WTA. Additionally, there’s a query of whether or not narrowing the scope of big-time tennis to a premier tour is sweet for the long-term well being of the skilled sport.
“The large distinction between tennis and practically each different sport is that tennis occasions are tied to participation,” mentioned the proprietor of a mid-sized event. “F1 is a spectacle. You possibly can’t develop a world participation sport with 14 tournaments world wide.”
That line of considering, nevertheless, depends on the premise that curiosity will robotically diminish within the small and mid-sized tournaments with the appearance of a premier tour, moderately than understanding the attraction of a cohesive system constructed round promotion and relegation.
“There isn’t actually a tour proper now,” mentioned John Morris, the business veteran on the helm of 72 Sports activities. “It’s a circus made up of particular person promoters and I say that with all due respect.”
Morris mentioned the small- and mid-sized tournaments is likely to be extra interesting than they’re now if the game organized them into regional circuits, with gamers competing to make the premier tour for the next season and coveted spots all through the season within the Grand Slams and different prime occasions.
In different phrases, whoever wins in Estoril, Portugal, Charleston, S.C. or Auckland might have new import, along with the restricted star points of interest they now get pleasure from. Play nicely for six weeks on lower-tier excursions and obtain a wild card entry into, say, the French Open.
Most significantly, Morris mentioned, gamers outdoors the highest 100 wouldn’t go broke funding their journey world wide since they’d largely play inside their areas on a circuit with much more cohesion and even perhaps a minimal wage. Prize cash wouldn’t essentially must rise all that a lot as a result of the prices for gamers would fall.
“Discovering a one-size-fits-all answer that fixes every thing abruptly is troublesome,” Pospisil mentioned. “As for lower-tier tournaments, I don’t suppose it might be worse. Possibly this ends in a a lot larger place for them.”
(High photograph: Getty Pictures; design: Sean Reilly)