Steve Simon was feeling optimistic.
Regardless of a 2023 season that ended with an avalanche of grumbling following the WTA Finals in Cancún, Mexico, which featured dangerous climate, a probably harmful middle court docket and unrelenting complaints from the gamers, Simon, the chairman and chief govt of the ladies’s tour, was doing the whole lot he might to maneuver ahead into 2024.
“The WTA may be very high quality,” Simon mentioned by video name in mid-December, simply after it was introduced that the WTA will quickly separate the roles of chairman and chief govt, with Simon turning into govt chairman. He not will likely be accountable for day-to-day operations and as an alternative will likely be tasked with, as he mentioned, “engaged on strategic geopolitical points, which at the moment are very prevalent and affecting our enterprise in many alternative methods.”
There are formative adjustments coming to the WTA and ATP this yr. The ATP has put into place its OneVision strategic plan designed to align the pursuits of gamers and tournaments with a watch towards enhancing the fan expertise whereas additionally creating extra profitable media contracts.
A part of the plan entails growing the period and draw dimension at a number of ATP tournaments. Madrid, Rome and Shanghai all went from one-week, 56-player-draw occasions to 12-day, 96-draw tournaments in 2023. Canada and Cincinnati will do the identical in 2025. Indian Wells and Miami are already staged that approach.
All are Masters 1000 tournaments, the very best degree when it comes to prize cash and rating factors aside from the 4 majors — the Australian, French, and United States Opens and Wimbledon. A number of of the tournaments are mixed males’s and ladies’s occasions. Different tournaments, like ones in Dallas, Munich and Doha, Qatar, are growing in worth whereas nonetheless others, together with Atlanta and Newport, R.I., are falling off the calendar after this yr.
In 2023, the ATP launched a 50-50 profit-sharing plan that distributed $12.2 million in further bonus pool cash to the highest gamers, elevating the general bonus pool to a report $33.5 million.
The WTA is just not in a monetary place to supply revenue sharing, however Simon mentioned he was decided to offer equal prize cash to ladies and men at mixed tournaments by 2027.
Simon can also be making hanging adjustments for 2024. Regardless of objections from prime gamers who felt they had been being pressured to compete an excessive amount of, the WTA would require gamers to decide to 16 tour occasions, the main tournaments and probably the year-end WTA Finals. Ten of these occasions are on the newly shaped WTA 1000 degree — a time period designed to align extra intently with the ATP — and 6 extra on the WTA 500 degree. A complete of 18 tournaments will now rely towards a participant’s rating.
For this yr there may be an added occasion, the Paris Olympics. Simon is conscious that can place an added burden on already overworked athletes.
“I’m undecided there may be ever a good time or a nasty time to introduce change,” he mentioned. “Clearly the gamers play a ton, and it’s very demanding and they’re drained. However we additionally know that the gamers must play to ensure that us to drive the worth of the product and the worth of {the marketplace}. Followers wish to see them play on a regular basis, and so they wish to see them enjoying in opposition to one another on a regular basis.”
Simon mentioned that 12-day occasions profit gamers as a result of they usually get a break day between matches, which helps their our bodies get well. Martina Navratilova doesn’t agree.
“Two-week occasions are nice for the followers as a result of it provides them extra possibilities to see the highest gamers,” mentioned Navratilova, a nine-time Wimbledon singles champion and former No. 1. “However the gamers are nonetheless in suspended animation. A break day isn’t actually a break day as a result of they nonetheless must apply and be emotionally invested. It’s simply exhausting and rather more stress.”
To shore up funds following the money-depleting Covid season in 2020, the WTA offered 20 % of its stake to CVC, a enterprise capital agency that when was an proprietor of Method 1, which is infusing $150 million. Talks proceed about merging the ATP and WTA, however nothing is predicted to occur within the close to future.
Simon likened the WTA to different skilled sports activities just like the 82-game N.B.A. season and 162-game Main League Baseball season. However that doesn’t keep in mind the multimonth low season of workforce sports activities, whereas tennis breaks for barely a month. Group sports activities additionally don’t require worldwide journey each week and permit for relaxation substitutions throughout competitors. Tennis doesn’t.
Some folks really feel tennis is combating an uphill battle.
“I feel we’re at a disaster level in our sport,” mentioned Mary Carillo, a former touring professional and longtime tv commentator. “There are all these silly turf wars over scheduling. And with everybody having to go from time zone to time zone each week it’s very arduous for anybody to hook up with what’s occurring until you’re actually within the weeds. It all the time looks as if we’re making an attempt to show round a leaky cruise ship.”
One of many greatest controversies surrounding each excursions is the willingness to play in Saudi Arabia, a nation with deep pockets for large payouts with a troubling human rights report.
Final yr the ATP performed its year-end 21-and-under occasion, the Subsequent Gen Finals, in Jeddah and Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz held an exhibition in Riyadh proper after Christmas.
Phil de Picciotto, the founder and president of Octagon, a sports activities administration company, has labored in tennis for greater than 4 a long time. He sees the great and the dangerous.
“That is probably the most tenuous time for tennis,” mentioned de Picciotto, who has represented many prime gamers, together with Steffi Graf. “Everyone seems to be jockeying for place amid a brand new panorama that gives monumental alternatives.”
“However it’s necessary to appreciate that the game can’t maintain a sequence of short-term visions,” he added. “Everybody has to consider the product in the long run, whether or not it’s governance or marketability. If Billie Jean King hadn’t thought long run within the Nineteen Seventies, then we might be nowhere in the present day.”