The Men’s Professional Tennis Tour (ATP) has begun the bidding process for the tenth edition of the Masters, which is scheduled to be played in the first week of each season. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Australia will now have the opportunity to make competitive bids after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) launched a proposal in early March to combine the ATP and WTA into one tour, including new tournaments.
The Arabs are willing to invest $2 billion in this project, but the game “Who will give the most?” can further paralyze the complex and uncertain issue of tennis development.
Related materials
Saudi Arabia’s Billion Dollar Revolution! Will tennis accept the sheikhs’ generous offer?
Saudis sign five-year, $100 million deal with ATP
The bidding process for the new premium tournament illustrates the growing agitation and nervousness among tennis officials at the highest levels. They are worried about losing their current level of control over their sport if the Saudis relinquish control, as golf did in the summer of 2023. The PIF then announced the merger of the Saudi-funded LIV golf league with the Association of Professional Golfers.
The Saudis began expanding into tennis in 2019, when they held an exhibition tournament in Riyadh. It was won by Daniil Medvedev, who, taking into account the trophy and participation bonus, received about 1.5 million dollars; most circuit players don’t make that kind of money in their entire career. This season another exhibition tournament will be held in the capital of Saudi Arabia with the best players and a crazy main prize of 6 million dollars.
Rafael Nadal named tennis ambassador of Saudi Arabia
Photo: From the personal archive of Rafael Nadal.
At the moment, the Arabs also took over the ATP U21 youth final and signed a five-year contract with the ATP for 100 million dollars, according to which they became the main sponsor of the ranking and will cooperate with the tournaments in Indian Wells, Miami. , Madrid and Beijing, as well as with the men’s final phase. In January 2024, Rafael Nadal became Saudi Arabia’s tennis ambassador; The offer was so favorable that the Spaniard was not ashamed even of the harsh criticism at home for his connection to a country with a low level of human rights protection. Also this year, the Saudis continued to push the idea of holding the final WTA tournament in Riyadh.
The PIF’s desire to own its own Masters is one more step in the process of a possible total takeover of world tennis. And here the Arabs play with grace in the eternal confrontation between the ATP and four Grand Slam tournaments. They have secured the support of the director of the Men’s Professional Tennis Tour, Andrea Gaudenzi. The Italian does not seem to care which way the wind will blow in the coming years, because his main task is to maintain power and attract maximum financing.
Related materials
Serena fought Nadal in Miami in the water. Unexpected tennis venues with stars
Gaudenzi, according to British journalist Simon Briggs, had hoped to take a major leadership role in the Helmets’ plans to develop a new Super Tour concept at the generous offer of the Arabs, but was not invited. It is planned to hold 16 tournaments: four Helmets, 10 Masters, a team tournament and the men’s and women’s Final. So far there are no concrete details on the Super Tour, so the head of the ATP decided to join the Arab tennis project to unite the women’s and men’s circuits. Andrea intends to take on the role of CEO in the new structure.
“Helmets” wants to partner with “Masters” to organize a Super Tour
Unsurprisingly, the battle for the future of tennis has become a soap opera in recent months, full of provocations and back-and-forth games that leave the fourth most popular sport in the world behind football, cricket and hockey in a state of total uncertainty. In tennis, which is governed by between seven and nine separate organizations, each with unique and overlapping interests, only one thing is now clear after nine months of fighting. Each participant in the big game is delighted with his plan and does not accept the arguments of his competitors.
Andrea Gaudenzi (far left) at the youth final in Jeddah in December 2023
Photo: Adam Pretty/Getty Images
The CEO of Tennis Australia, Craig Tiley, was the first to recognize that in the face of an Arab offensive on all fronts, he could not stand idly by. The CEO of the Australian Open has suggested that the other major tournaments (Roland Garros, Wimbledon, US Open) join together to try to persuade the 10 biggest tournaments on the tennis calendar to break away from the ATP and WTA and form a premium circuit for the top 100 players.
The plan quickly gained momentum and support from many of these tournaments, but has stalled in recent months because the big boys have yet to find funding for a premium tour or figure out how to share their riches with each other and everyone else. If the Super Tour were launched, the rest of the ATP and WTA tournaments could lose value, so Gaudenzi flew to Riyadh and tried to reach an agreement with the Saudis to host the tenth Masters.
Related materials
Azarenka and Osaka demand payment of maternity capital. The management does not react at all.
The tournament should take place in Saudi Arabia every January and begin in 2025. This would threaten the viability of tournaments leading up to the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam of the year. In particular, the United Cup should be removed from the calendar. Slams leaders also didn’t like Gaudenzi’s idea of extending the Masters for two weeks to make it similar to the Majors.
The ATP may lose important investors once the tender is established
In early March, Gaudenzi and Tiley met at a tournament in Indian Wells to find common ground, but so far that’s hard to count on. According to The Telegraph, during the meeting the ATP boss concealed from the Slams representative that he had received an offer from the Sovereign Fund to merge the men’s and women’s tours at enormous cost. The Arabs were also unhappy that the information was available to journalists, because they expected the negotiations to be confidential. With this approach from all parties, it will be very difficult for them to reach a compromise.
Gaudenzi was not embarrassed and conceived a new and cunning combination: why consider only the Saudi offer if a tender can be held among other important players in the market? Thus, new candidates appeared on the horizon: Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which have been organizing tennis tournaments for a long time and are partners of the ATP and WTA. According to The Athletic, the proud representatives of the PIF withdrew their bids after the auction was organized and it is unknown if they will return to the bidders.
Craig Tiley presents the Australian Open trophy to Aryna Sabalenka
Photo: Andy Cheung/Getty Images
The situation remains completely unpredictable, but practice shows that serious market players value their reputation too much to use it to increase the price of a product. An excellent example is the failure of the French football league in the fall of 2023 to organize a tender for the sale of television rights between the television channels and streaming services Amazon Prime, Canal+, beIN Sports, DAZN and Apple TV . As a result, they did not receive a single offer.
Tennis is, of course, a very tasty slice of the sporting pie for those seeking to improve the international reputation of Arab countries, but Gaudenzi may play too much and cause even greater division in the sport.
