2 hours ago
The creation of a associated commercialized task betwixt nan tours of nan men’s Association of Tennis Professionals and nan Women’s Tennis Association has been put connected clasp indefinitely arsenic nan women’s crippled faces nan imaginable of making important cuts to its operational budget.
Negotiations complete a merger, which would person meant nan tours pooling their commercialized and media rights, are understood to person surgery down complete nan position of nan projected gross share, pinch nan WTA successful effect stepping distant from a woody that had appeared adjacent to being finalised past year.
Sources pinch knowledge of nan talks person told nan Guardian that nan WTA chair, Valerie Camillo, is unhappy pinch position accepted by her predecessor, Steve Simon, who stood down aft a decade successful complaint astatine nan extremity of past year.
The ATP main executive, Eno Pollo, said successful January nan 2 tours were “quite adjacent to reaching an agreement,” but specified optimism has proved unfounded.
As nan smaller tour, pinch yearly gross of $142m successful 2024 compared pinch nan ATP’s $294m, nan WTA theoretically could person gained from pooling resources and sharing gross successful nan longer term, but was not prepared to judge nan position connected offer.
The WTA is understood to person already begun to instrumentality cost-cutting measures, pinch less operational unit attending immoderate events, including Wimbledon.
While location has been nary effect connected prize money to day location is understood to beryllium immoderate interest successful nan locker room that tourney purses could beryllium trim aliases stiff successful early years, aft nan WTA took nan determination this period to exit its three-year statement to return its finals bid to Saudi Arabia 1 twelvemonth early. Instead of being held successful Riyadh, this year’s WTA finals will return spot successful Indian Wells, California.
Despite facing financial pressures, however, nan WTA has nary plans to travel nan ATP successful cutting its doubles programme. Under a connection discussed pinch nan players past week, doubles draws astatine ATP 1000 events would beryllium halved to 16 pairs, pinch only 8 pairs competing astatine smaller tournaments, and their stock of tourney prize money would beryllium reduced from 20% to 10%.
The ATP and WTA declined to comment.
