Prize money is soaring. Investment is flooding in. Yet governance is fractured, players are burning out, and fans are left confused.
Prize money keeps rising. Private equity keeps investing. Top players are earning record sums. The sport looks healthy on paper. It doesn’t feel healthy.
Novak Djokovic launched a rival players’ association because he doesn’t trust the ATP. Fans can’t figure out who actually runs tennis. Lower-ranked players are going broke while stars make tens of millions. The calendar is so brutal that Iga Swiatek openly questioned whether she should keep playing during the 2024-25 season.
For a sport drowning in capital, tennis feels oddly unstable. The contradiction exposes something uncomfortable: money isn’t fixing tennis because money isn’t the problem. The sport’s central crisis isn’t financial. It’s existential.
Tennis has no idea what it’s trying to be, and all the private equity in the world won’t solve that.
Nobody Knows Who’s Actually in Charge
Ask a casual fan who runs tennis, and watch them struggle.
The ATP? The WTA? The ITF? The Grand Slams? National federations? Tournament owners?
Answer: all of them. And none of them.
Overlapping authorities govern tennis with competing incentives. The Grand Slams control the biggest events but don’t answer to the tours. The ATP and WTA run schedules but can’t force participation. Tournament owners, many now backed by private equity, negotiate independently. Because no one has final authority, no one takes final responsibility.
When Djokovic tried to organize players during COVID, he had to create a separate organization (the PTPA) because the existing player council had no real power. When the WTA wanted equal prize money, each Grand Slam had to be negotiated separately. When scheduling became unsustainable, no single body could fix it.
Compare this to the NBA, where the league office controls everything, or the Premier League, where governance is clear, although imperfect. Tennis has a governance structure that would make the United Nations jealous. And about as effective.
The result is a sport that feels leaderless even when flush with cash.
Players Are Independent Contractors (Except When They’re Not)
Tennis markets itself on meritocracy and open competition. Any player can enter qualifying. Rankings determine everything. No closed leagues, no franchise ownership. Pure sport. In theory, players are independent contractors, free to make their own decisions. In practice, they’re subject to mandatory tournament requirements, strict ranking systems, tour schedules they can’t influence, and sponsorship conflicts they can’t avoid.
Iga Swiatek gets fined for skipping mandatory press conferences. Carlos Alcaraz can’t skip Monte Carlo even if exhausted. Yet when players want guarantees, health insurance, or collective bargaining, they’re told they’re independent contractors who should negotiate individually. Tennis wants the flexibility of treating players as contractors without giving them the freedoms. It’s the gig economy with mandatory shifts.
This contradiction breeds resentment. When the PTPA proposed profit-sharing, the ATP responded that players aren’t employees. When players asked for guaranteed appearance fees, tours said it would undermine meritocracy. Yet tours mandate which events players must attend.
You can’t have it both ways. Well, you can. Tennis does. That’s the problem.
Fans Don’t Understand What They’re Watching
What are you buying when you watch tennis?
A meritocratic global tour where anyone can win? An exhibition circuit featuring star athletes? A collection of independent tournaments loosely coordinated? A pathway system for developing players?
The answer depends on the week and the event.
Grand Slams feel like major championships with deep draws and historic prestige. ATP Masters 1000 events feel mandatory but also skippable. ATP 250s alternate between critical ranking opportunities and afterthoughts. Exhibition events in Saudi Arabia pay more than sanctioned tournaments but carry zero ranking points. Casual fans cannot follow the narrative.
Why does Djokovic skip Miami but play Riyadh? Why does Alcaraz earn more from Nike than from winning Wimbledon? Why are Grand Slams governed separately from the tours? Why do rankings determine seeding, except when they don’t? Other sports have coherent structures. The NFL has 17 regular season games, playoffs, and the Super Bowl. The Premier League has 38 matches and relegation. Formula 1 has a season-long championship with clear points.
Tennis has a calendar. And confusion.
This isn’t a small problem. Sports that can’t explain themselves to casual audiences eventually lose those audiences. Tennis still produces extraordinary athletes and iconic moments, yet struggles to convert them into lasting engagement beyond the majors.
Capital Rally View
Here’s what nobody wants to say out loud: tennis is getting private equity money despite its structure, not because of it.
CVC invested in the WTA, betting on potential, not efficiency. Saudi Arabia is buying prestige and sports-washing opportunities, not a well-governed product. Nike pays Alcaraz because he’s individually marketable, not because the ATP tour makes commercial sense.
Tennis is trading on legacy and star power while its governing structure undermines both.
If the sport can’t clarify what it’s selling, capital will eventually find better-structured alternatives. If players can’t trust governance, they’ll fragment further, the PTPA isn’t going away. If fans can’t follow storylines beyond “Djokovic vs. Alcaraz at a Grand Slam,” they’ll drift to simpler sports.
Money bought tennis time. It didn’t buy tennis answers. And time is running out faster than governing bodies seem to realize.
Reform Keeps Missing the Point
Tennis has tried fixing itself repeatedly.
Equal prize money at Grand Slams (achieved in 2007). Increased prize pools at ATP/WTA events, larger first-round guarantees for lower-ranked players, experiments with shortened matches and reduced mandatory events (some implemented, others quietly reversed), unified ATP/WTA marketing proposals (discussed endlessly, never implemented).
Result: minimal lasting change.
Why? Because each reform addresses a symptom, not the underlying disease. Bigger prize eases the financial pressure, but doesn’t fix the punishing calendar. Unified marketing sounds sensible, but can’t override competing governance interests. Player welfare initiatives are welcome, but sidestep the fundamental tension: is tennis an open meritocracy or a star-driven entertainment product? Reforms keep tweaking the edges while avoiding the core contradiction; tennis refuses to choose what it wants to be.
Until it confronts that question, every financial or structural adjustment will feel temporary, every governance dispute unresolved, and every attempt at progress will generate new friction rather than real resolution.
Tennis Can’t Decide What It Wants to Be
This is the existential question tennis refuses to answer.
Is tennis an open meritocracy or an elite entertainment product?
If it’s a meritocracy, keep 128-player draws at Grand Slams, maintain pathways for lower-ranked players, resist guaranteed money (it undermines competition), and accept that this dilutes star power and complicates storytelling.
If it’s entertainment, shrink fields to feature only top players, guarantee appearance fees for stars, consolidate events for better narratives, and accept that this reduces access and betrays the sport’s open-competition ethos.
Tennis wants both. You can’t have both.
The NBA chose entertainment decades ago. A closed league, guaranteed contracts and star-driven marketing. European football chose meritocracy with promotion, relegation, and open competition. Both systems work because they’re coherent.
Tennis hasn’t chosen. The result is a sport trying to serve two incompatible visions, satisfying neither fully, and creating constant tension between stakeholders who are being asked to support fundamentally different products.
What Tennis Actually Needs
Not another investment round. Not another prize money increase. Not another reform proposal that tweaks without transforming.
Tennis needs to answer three questions it’s been avoiding for decades:
Who is in charge? Create a single governing body with real authority, or accept permanent fragmentation and stop pretending coordination is possible.
What is the product? Choose between meritocracy and entertainment. Stop pretending the sport can fully deliver both without consequence.
Who does tennis serve? Top 10 players? Top 100? Everyone with a ranking? Be explicit about priorities instead of trying to please everyone and pleasing no one.
Until tennis answers these questions, every financial reform will feel provisional. Every governance dispute will feel unresolvable. Every attempt at progress will create new tensions.
The Bottom Line
Tennis has more money, more attention, and more opportunity than ever before. Yet it feels increasingly adrift. That’s not a funding problem. It’s a vision problem. Money can smooth friction, but cannot resolve identity, and right now, tennis has no idea what it’s trying to be. The dangerous thing isn’t being underfunded. It’s being unsure what you stand for.
Other sports made these choices decades ago. Tennis has delayed them and now faces them all at once.
The sport can keep pretending the contradictions don’t matter, or it can finally choose. Because eventually, everyone else will choose for them.
What should tennis choose: open meritocracy or star-driven entertainment? Drop your thoughts below.
For more on the broader governance and identity crisis in tennis, see this analysis.