Men’s tennis is planning to emulate the PGA Tour by bringing in a new payment structure, with bands of guaranteed income for the top 250 or 300 players in the world.
Just as golf recently pumped up its prize packets to fend off the Saudi-backed breakaway circuit LIV Golf – with every PGA card-holder guaranteed a minimum annual salary of $500,000 – the ATP are aiming to lower the stress and uncertainty of the professional tennis player on tour.
The idea is that any player with a high enough ranking to compete on the ATP Tour – or the feeder Challenger tour – will be allocated an expected income depending on their position on Jan 1.
The fine print is still being worked out, but the intention is to cover the costs of funding your career – which for a top player could be something like $100,000 on travel per annum, plus $75,000 for a full-time coach and $50,000 for the coach’s travel.
A Challenger player would clearly expect to pay out significantly less in costs, and thus would be eligible for a much smaller guaranteed pay packet.
The ATP – whose chairman Andrea Gaudenzi was re-elected earlier this month for a new three-year term – make roughly $200m per annum out of a combination of their Finals event in Turin, sponsorship deals, sanction fees for the tournaments they certify, and a share of media rights.
This isn’t enough to pay out salaries to 250-odd players at the start of the year without taking on a substantial overdraft. So the plan is to offer top-up payments at the end of the season to those whose income has dropped significantly below expectations – whether because of injury or a disastrous loss of form.
By taking some of the risk out of the season’s planning, ATP bosses hope to encourage players to invest in their own development – which in most cases means hiring staff to assist with coaching, fitness training, or physical and mental wellbeing.
Because of structural differences in the way the two sports operate, the ATP Tour have a much smaller income than the PGA, which stages its own events rather than using intermediaries and thus rakes in around $1.5bn per annum.
But the two sports are increasingly pooling ideas about how to look after their players, especially after the wake-up call that is the LIV Golf breakaway.
In tennis, the ATP are keeping a wary eye on the Professional Tennis Players’ Association – a rival union led by world No1 Novak Djokovic – even though the PTPA have yet to offer a distinctive plan of their own for growing the game or the players’ incomes.
