Days before the start of the Australian Open in Melbourne, several of the most powerful leaders in tennis gathered 10,000 miles away to chart their way out of the antitrust lawsuits that threaten their power.
The leaders of the men’s and women’s tours, and the organizers of the other three Grand Slam tournaments, spent Tuesday and Wednesday in closed-door meetings in London, according to three sources briefed on the discussions who, like all the sources in this story, were not authorized to speak publicly about them.
The leaders discussed the structure of a deal aimed at giving tournaments financial security, producing more revenue for the sport, and giving players the increased pay, benefits and voice for which they have been pushing ever harder in recent months.
Representatives for the ATP Tour and the French Tennis Federation did not immediately respond to a request for comment; a representative for the All England Club declined to comment.
Representatives for the United States Tennis Association and WTA Tour said they were not aware of the nature of the discussions and could not comment on them.
Those meetings followed a series of discussions between Andrea Gaudenzi, the chairman of the ATP Tour, and Ahmad Nassar, the executive director of the Professional Tennis Players Association, which filed those antitrust lawsuits last spring.
Both sides, alongside their lawyers, have expressed a desire to make changes to improve the sport quickly, rather than slog through a lengthy and expensive legal battle that is likely to leave everyone involved unhappy, two sources briefed on those discussions said.
The sources also said that these latest meetings are preliminary. In December, the PTPA and Tennis Australia announced they had reached an as-yet-undisclosed settlement.
Any deal with the remaining defendants — the ATP and WTA Tours, and the organizers of Wimbledon and the French and U.S. Opens, remains far off, and all of them have also filed renewed motions to dismiss the lawsuits on a variety of technical grounds.
These discussions are the latest chapter in a story that is about as long as tennis’ history as a professional sport. Players, the tours and the tournaments decide change is needed. They suggest how to change. They discuss how to change. They largely agree on what to change.
But change never really arrives.
Since 2023, the Grand Slams and the ATP and WTA Tours have produced plans and held meetings that all revolve around the same basic principles, but do not agree on how they should be made flesh.
Those plans include a unified governance structure, which retains the identities of the tours and the Grand Slams. They include portions of revenue from tournaments of all sizes being pooled. They include a stronger, more formal voice for players than their current seats on ATP and WTA councils, because without them, everyone agrees, there is no sport. They include enough tournaments for players lower down the rankings to earn a living and rise up, but not so many that they are hard to follow.
However, purpose-built parts of the tennis ecosystem represent blockages. Tennis is largely wedded to hugely lucrative, lengthy and longstanding media rights deals that bring in millions of dollars but can lack the flexibility required for a sport to thrive amid the slow decline of traditional television rights. Tournament owners almost largely pay their bills through local ticket sales and sponsorships in a system that incentivizes them to focus on their own interests.
Fans need multiple subscriptions to watch their favorite players, who are not permitted to create and share content from their matches. Men’s and women’s matches at the same events are shown on different networks or platforms.
The organizations and players agree on what is wrong. The season is too onerous. There are too many weeks when stars are at different tournaments. The administration is too fragmented. The sport is leaving too much money on the table and too many eyeballs blind as a result. As yet, they have been unable to agree on how to make it right.
Gaudenzi and the PTPA had been talking to this effect before Tennis Australia’s settlement with the PTPA was announced. But that announcement remapped the terrain of the fight.
That deal essentially meant that Tennis Australia had switched sides, in a tacit agreement to help the PTPA wage a fight against its former allies.
Similar moves in other antitrust actions, including the recent settlements in American college sports, have proven pivotal, with an initial settlement with one party providing the impetus for other parties to settle as well.
Then there is the impact of Novak Djokovic’s decision Sunday to sever ties with the PTPA, the organization he co-founded in 2020. He decided not to become a plaintiff in the lawsuit. He decided not to become the face of the most adversarial action players have taken against the sport in a generation, at a time in his career when he has become the sport’s elder statesman.
His departure has no direct impact on the suit. But it is a significant blow to the legitimacy of the PTPA, a player-led organization aimed at increasing player power that now lacks a major player.
The organization and its for-profit entity, the Winners Alliance, need money from investors and corporate partners to fight the lawsuit. Raising that money is likely to be harder without Djokovic’s involvement.
So with the aftershocks of Djokovic’s surprise announcement still reverberating, two people briefed on the PTPA’s plans going forward described the discussions among their adversaries as a sign of their organization’s continuing vitality.
Tennis Australia chief executive Craig Tiley with defending Australian Open champion Madison Keys. TA was the first body to reach a settlement with the PTPA. (Andy Cheung / Getty Images)
And then there is the group of top-10 ATP and WTA players who have been using their profiles and their news conferences at tournaments to criticize the majors over prize money and the tours over the tennis calendar and schedule. This separate effort to the PTPA lawsuit, which includes sending letters to the Grand Slams, adds to the pressure that the most powerful organizations in the sport are feeling.
What happens now? In recent months, the PTPA has tried to get Gaudenzi and the other parties to view the antitrust actions as something other than a weapon of tennis destruction, despite the language of cartels and corruption that it first used in them.
With the Australian Open on the horizon, the top players will get another chance to rabble-rouse at one of the four biggest tournaments in the sport. Just this week, women’s world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka labeled the schedule and the penalties players receive for skipping events “insane”; the WTA Tour said in response that player welfare is a top priority.
Settlements in the lawsuits, the PTPA and its defendants increasingly believe, could serve as a kind of skeleton key that the leaders of the sport can use to bring about the change that has been discussed for so many years, but has never emerged from behind closed doors like those in London this past week.
— The Athletic’s Charlie Eccleshare contributed to this report.
