It was widely known that the situation at the top of the male tennis pyramid was tense. However, no one could have expected such a break in the midst of the worst crisis in the history of professional tennis. According to The New York Times, Vasek Pospisil, Novak Djokovic, and John Isner resigned from their roles as members of the Players Council in order to create a new players’ association that would compete with the ATP to get more favourable working conditions for the category.
At the 2019 Australian Open, Djokovic presented his colleagues with a draft for the creation of such an organization, devised by an American firm, Norton Rose Fullbright. A year later, however, the Serbian himself admitted that they couldn’t go forward with their project due to the complexity of the Tour’s structure, which is made of players who reside in dozens of different countries with the most disparate jurisdictions, and the same goes for the tournaments – these elements made the creation of a definite legal entity close to impossible.
However, it seems like the puzzle was finally cracked. According to a letter that the journalists of The New York Times could get their hands on, all players have been invited to promptly join the new association, whose name should be “Professional Tennis Players Association”, and to gather at Flushing Meadows on Saturday night to get a group picture of all participants to the bona fide secession.
The way this is happening does bear some historical echoing to how the ATP Tour was founded in 1988. The players met for the now legendary “Parking Lot Press Conference”, also at Flushing Meadows, in order to snatch control of the circuit from the Pro Council – the new tour would start in 1990.
The aim of the association “is not to replace the ATP, but to provide players with a self-governance structure that is independent from the ATP and is directly responsive to player-members’ needs and concerns,” according to the letter. Membership should be offered to the top 500 singles players as well as to the top 200 doubles specialists.
The players have elected not speak publicly for the time being, and the same goes for the ATP officials, whose absence from New York drew criticism from several players, including Gilles Simon and Reilly Opelka. Also according to the Times, ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi has replied to the letter by admonishing the players that a schism is “not to take lightly”, as it could be a threat to the survival of the ATP and of the tour themselves.
Therefore, he stated that the association would get no official recognition from the tournaments, jeopardising the current privileges that players enjoy: “You have what other athletes in other sports would strive for — a seat at the boardroom table. That is what players fought for in the creation of the ATP Tour. It makes no sense why you would be better served by shifting your role from the inside to the outside of the governance structure.” He concluded by adding: “Our battle is not with each other. Now, more than ever, is the time for unity and collaboration.”
Anyway, so far Pospisil is the sole individual who has made public his resolve to resign from his role in the Players Council, as can be seen in the picture below:
Djokovic and Isner haven’t officially quit yet, even though Gaudenzi is reportedly pushing for them to do so, as he doesn’t see their roles for two competing unions as compatible. Milos Raonic told The New York Times that he will join the new associations, as he wasn’t satisfied with Gaudenzi’s leadership throughout the tour’s hiatus.
Once more, the move doesn’t take into consideration the presence of the WTA Tour. A potential merger with the ATP Tour has been rumoured for months, and it would allegedly be an attempt to give a more cohesive structuring to the game. Actually, as The Daily Telegraph’s Simon Briggs reports, the overture to the WTA might have been a decisive element in accelerating the creation of a new union, since some of the male players feel that a merger would endanger their bottom-lines.
It seems clear, as a matter of fact, that the WTA would strive for an even revenue split, while at the moment the ATP is 8-10 times bigger than the WTA from structural and financial standpoints. Specifically, the difference is starking when it comes to TV deals for the most prized events, i.e. the ATP Tour’s Masters 1000 events and the WTA Tour’s Premier Mandatory and Premier 5 ones. According to internal sources, the the men’s tournaments draw profits that are six times as big as the women’s.
