Tennis has been thrown into upheaval after a group of players launched a worldwide legal suit against what it called a “corrupt, abusive and illegal” system.
This potentially landmark case mainly focuses on the calendar – with its short lay-off and restrictive approach to outside exhibitions – and on the punishing working conditions which leave so many players struggling with injuries or mental fatigue.
The class-action lawsuit – which is being filed in the USA, the UK and the European Union on Tuesday – has been brought by five names including former Wimbledon doubles champion Vasek Pospisil and former top-30 player Sorana Cirstea.
But the key backers of this case are the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA), the rival players union formed by Novak Djokovic and Pospisil in 2020.
In October, Telegraph Sport reported exclusively on how Ahmad Nassar, the PTPA chief executive, had – in his words – engaged “multiple outside counsels to really dig in and be overt and aggressive on the many flaws of the current system.”
Today, that work has reached the next stage – direct legal confrontation with the three main tours: the ATP (who deal with the leading men), the WTA (the equivalent body for women), and the ITF (who run second-tier events).
In a statement, Nassar said that “Tennis is broken … Players are trapped in an unfair system that exploits their talent, suppresses their earnings, and jeopardises their health and safety. We have exhausted all options for reform through dialogue, and the governing bodies have left us no choice but to seek accountability through the courts.”
He was supported by Pospisil, the Canadian former world No 25 who has become a locker-room figurehead for the PTPA. “This is not just about money – it’s about fairness, safety, and basic human dignity,” Pospisil said. “I’m one of the more fortunate players and I’ve still had to sleep in my car when travelling to matches … No other major sport treats its athletes this way. The governing bodies force us into unfair contracts, impose inhumane schedules, and punish us for speaking out.”
The suit covers numerous areas including:
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Suppression of rival tournaments by the tours
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Fixing of prize-money so that tournaments cannot offer more than a specified amount
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Use of rankings points to discourage players from appearing in rival events, including the Olympics
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An exhausting 11-month schedule with hardly any downtime
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Regular scheduling over-runs which result in matches being played in the small hours of the morning
The tours now face a complicated and potentially costly decision over whether to fight the case across three different global jurisdictions. The ATP probably have the financial reserves to do so, but the other two are less well resourced.
The antitrust lawsuit follows a similar case in golf where 11 professional players, including Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau, took legal action against the PGA Tour following the creation of LIV Golf. The legal complaint was dropped in June 2023 upon the ‘merger deal’ that the two parties agreed, although a full resolution is yet to be reached despite the intervention of Donald Trump, who has hosted recent peace talks at the White House.
Nassar insists that he isn’t looking to bankrupt the tours. Instead, he wants to bring all parties back to the negotiating table, having demonstrated that he is serious about change. “I would settle tomorrow,” he told Telegraph Sport, “if we could get a real commitment to create a better environment for the players”.
This is not the first time that the tennis authorities have faced anti-trust suits, but in the past they have come from rival operators rather than the players who – in theory – hold a 50 per cent share in the ATP and WTA organisations.
This very structure – which lumps together tournaments and workforce in an uneasy compromise – is part of the problem. It prevents the two parties from thrashing out collective bargaining agreements on pay and working conditions, as would happen in any normal sport.
The push from the players comes after a year that saw a great deal of political manoeuvring with zero end result. In the early months of 2024, the four grand-slam events tried to float a new and streamlined “Premium Tour” model, but ran into concerted resistance from the ATP and WTA.
More recently, ATP chairman Andrea Gaudenzi has been pushing to bring together the commercial rights of both men’s and women’s tours into one combined organisation. But this too has run into opposition from vested interests.
“The fact that the slams and the ATP have both been trying to change the structure shows that they know it is suboptimal,” Nassar said. “But from the perspective of the players, whose careers are too short, change needs to happen now.”
The most recent legal precedent came in 2008 when the ATP reorganised the calendar and downgraded a tournament in Hamburg, which responded with a lawsuit on anti-competitive grounds. The ATP won the case.
According to an administrator familiar with the case, “The ATP’s defence relied on what I’d call the rule of reason. A lot of the rules on the tours are in theory anti-competitive but they were created to provide a rational organisation of the sport.”
Trump administration open to negotiations – just like Gaza, Ukraine and golf
The timing of the PTPA’s legal suit is connected to the change of administration in the White House, insiders suggest.
Not only is the new Republican administration likely to create a more favourable environment for anti-trust suits than the Democrats, given its disdain of red tape, but Donald Trump himself is clearly interested in playing a role on the sporting stage.
Since his return to power, Trump has already held three meetings with Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who chairs not only the LIV Golf tour but also its financial backers the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund.
Those talks, which have also involved players Tiger Woods and Adam Scott, and PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, have been intended to broker a peace deal with the two circuits. However, they have yet to reach a breakthrough in unifying the divided sport.
Now, according to sources, people connected to the Trump administration have expressed an interest in getting involved in the tennis case.
We might even suggest that Trump sees the growing rift between tennis players and administrators as another messy row that he can wade into, equating it not only with the golf schemozzle but also wider geopolitical issues in Ukraine and Gaza.
To Trump, these are all opportunities for grandstanding, regardless of their very different subject matter. Whether his involvement is likely to help bring the rival parties to an agreement is, however, another question.
There is also a possible personal connection between Trump and the PTPA in the form of Bill Ackman, the billionaire fund manager who is one of the president’s many super-rich backers. A tennis enthusiast, Ackman is understood to have helped support the PTPA during its developmental stage.
More broadly, Trump is interested in the soft power of sport. Last month, he was the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl. Last year, he challenged his predecessor Joe Biden to face him on the golf course during a chaotic presidential debate.
Trump has never bought a major sports franchise, but he did own the New Jersey Generals of the USFL – a short-lived rival to the NFL – and this is where he became close to the Republicans’ future Georgia senate candidate Herschel Walker, a star running back who is now Trump’s ambassador to the Bahamas.
While golf is Trump’s favourite sport, he played tennis with Serena Williams in 2015 to mark the opening of a new set of courts at one of his golf courses. At last year’s criminal trial for falsifying financial records over payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, Trump’s phone records were revealed, and Williams turned out to be on his frequent call list.
Williams did not seem happy to be asked about this detail during an interview with the New York Times, however. “I talk to a lot of presidents,” she replied, “I spoke to Barack, I spoke to the Clintons. I spoke to every president since I’ve been alive, including Ronald Reagan, I’ll have you know.”
The ATP, WTA, ITF and ITIA have been approached for a response.
