Tennis’s elite tours – the ATP and the WTA – are preparing to vote on a commercial merger that would start with assets being split 80 per cent towards the men and 20 per cent towards the women.
While an 80-20 split might represent poor optics for a sport with aspirations towards equality, it also reflects commercial reality. Filed accounts from 2022 show that the WTA’s income for that year stood at a mere £90 million to the ATP’s £238 million.
Once you look beyond the headline figure, however, the small print may be more positive for the women. A crucial “synergies” clause could work in the WTA’s favour – and thus help bring the tours together in what would be the first step towards a less fragmented sport.
While preparing for board votes at the tours’ end-of-year finals – in Turin and Riyadh respectively – chairmen Andrea Gaudenzi and Steve Simon will emphasise that the 80-20 figure is only a starting point, applying to existing assets and projected growth.
Should the merger achieve its aim, which is to bring in extra profit to both tours that they wouldn’t expect to earn on their own, then the synergy windfall would be split 50-50.
To take an example, if the tours’ joint income from a particular area of sponsorship had been forecast to reach £100,000, but the appeal of a mixed-gender package had helped them bring in £110,000 instead, then the synergy income of £10,000 would be split into £5,000 for each party.
And with numerous potential savings on offer through reducing duplication in the two tours’ marketing and commercial departments, some sort of synergy income should be achievable within the first couple of years.
As one insider told Telegraph Sport, “The WTA would be saving on agency fees and head counts and there’s a feeling that this could be a win for them.”
But another source warned that the devil would be in the detail. “If you’re setting up what is known as a ‘ratchet’ deal in the finance world, where revenues are split in different proportions depending on how big they are, then a lot depends on where you put the threshold. If the WTA allow the projected growth figures to be set at a high level, they’ll struggle to reach that 50-50 stage.”
All these details will need to be considered and approved by a number of different stakeholders: not just the ATP board, for instance, but the ATP Masters 1000 events as well.
On the women’s side, one key voice will be that of CVC – the private equity firm which bought a 20 per cent stake in the commercial operations of the WTA two years ago.
Even if all the boards green-light the merger, however, the full benefit would not be felt until the WTA and ATP are able to combine their TV and data rights. The WTA have signed deals with Stats Perform that expire in 2026 for live broadcast and 2029 for data, and these will tie their hands in the short term.
Perhaps the most significant advantage of this deal is that it would open up the possibility of future collaboration with the majors. The united commercial entity would be well placed to discuss running a unified tour with the slams, perhaps something similar to the proposed “Premium Tour” that was in the offing earlier this season.
The “Premium Tour” movement has gone very quiet of late, but the essential concept could be revitalised by an ATP-WTA commercial merger. Were the new body to sit down with the four majors, you would be talking about apples and apples – in the sense that both parties would be representing women as well as men – for the first time in tennis history.
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