Micky Lawler, the president of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), has expressed her desire to see the creation of a unified body to govern men’s and women’s tennis globally.
In a WTA and ATP merger, the ATP would probably totally dominate the WTA.
The women broke away from the ATP when they were receiving about 1/20 the prise money.
The only positive might be the eliminating of some duplicate management overhead costs.
Thats what Larry Scott wanted as WTA CEO. He saw how well IW & Miami were and wanted the whole year to be joint events with equal money.
The men dont want that
of course they want that, because then the women could demand the same money as the men get at all tour events (not just the Grand Slams & joint events) based on the principle of sexual equality. Merging with the ATP would be a huge cash cow for the WTA. I kind of doubt that this would be a marriage of true love though.
Lol what a joke. We need competent people who actually loves women's tennis to be in the governing board. These people can't see beyond their paychecks.
Nope wta should remain as one. Billie jean king and future players fought so hard for women tennis and this will be like slap on their faces.
Better to promote new players and upcoming stars to public and tv audience for boost. Look how atp successfully promote their young players. Atp will never agree to share the money with wta. And hard fact is atp brings more money. Why should they share it with wta .? Will wta share yec money with atp? Nope..
So wta should remain different and market wta players better. And it will never happen. Most atp players will never agree to share prize money outside slams. Wta needs to fight their problems by themselves
Not sure what they'd gain from that. The WTA is doing just fine on its own. Maybe they could push for a few more joint tournaments, especially trying to unify at all Masters-level events. But merging the tours doesn't seem workable, or a good idea.
An attempt to dilute player representatives between two tours (if there is a merger, then the player reps will be split into two tours, while the organizers remain the same one unitary block).
What the tennis players need is something else: a player union — in the mould of NBA, NFL, PFA (English Premier League soccer union)... etc
The option of firing Simon and Lawley should be discussed more seriously. They're both incompetent. They abandoned ATP owned Tennis TV just three years ago to create an inferior streaming service but they now want to merge with the ATP?
And I thought that noone worse than Stavey can rule one of the world's biggest sport sports organisation.
That one is plain stupid, with no vision, can't manage basic stuff and should think about retirement
Yes they do, obviously the WTA benefits more from merged events and that sort of thing but it's not like the ATP doesn't benefit either. They were the ones pushing for combined events in the early 2000s when they were on the shadow of the WTA.
The National Women's Hockey League (NWHL) wanted to merge with the NHL when the women's game couldn't attract fans and couldn't make money. NWHL literally wanted the NHL to prop up their league. As others have stated, the next move would have been asking for 'equal pay.'
WTA request for merger with ATP may be showing concerns about the viability of the WTA. As Wiggly stated, there should be assessment of WTA management first. Problems could be related to unrealistic expansion that has failed to provide value for sponsors or fill the seats.
you know if they tried to play more tournaments atp/wta combined that ISNER V KARLOVIC would get centre court billing and OSAKA V ANDREESCU would get court 1.
the w.t.a. must do better at promoting their great young players, and also fix up their useless and uninformative website.
you know if they tried to play more tournaments atp/wta combined that ISNER V KARLOVIC would get centre court billing and OSAKA V ANDREESCU would get court 1.
the w.t.a. must do better at promoting their great young players, and also fix up their useless and uninformative website.
One thing I'm always curious about is that these Chinese investors have been unsuccessful from usurping ATP events. Does the ATP not chase dollars the same way? Is it harder to fill a part of the more successful ATP calendar the way the Chinese saw an opportunity with WTA? This is a legitimate question as I'm curious.
There is no reason for the ATP to agree to this. Lawler sounds desperate making this suggestion publicly. The way the WTA pulled out of the TennisTV contract left a bad taste in many mouths running the ATP. Why would they go back into partnership with the WTA?
The ATP is doing a great job promoting not only its veteran players (including the Big 3/4) but people are excited about Sinner, Tsitsipas, Zverev, and Medvedev already and they will draw tons of fans to see their matches. The WTA has good up and coming players but who has ever heard of them?
As others have said the WTA needs to handle its own corporate business -mostly marketing - before looking to "merge" with the men's tour. They also need to look at how to get out of that ten year contract in Shenzen.
There is no reason for the ATP to agree to this. Lawler sounds desperate making this suggestion publicly. The way the WTA pulled out of the TennisTV contract left a bad taste in many mouths running the ATP. Why would they go back into partnership with the WTA?
The ATP is doing a great job promoting not only its veteran players (including the Big 3/4) but people are excited about Sinner, Tsitsipas, Zverev, and Medvedev already and they will draw tons of fans to see their matches. The WTA has good up and coming players but who has ever heard of them?
As others have said the WTA needs to handle its own corporate business -mostly marketing - before looking to "merge" with the men's tour. They also need to look at how to get out of that ten year contract in Shenzen.
Why would they? They're getting yuuuge cash, far above market value, for the event. It's free money that Steve Simon said had transformed the WTA's finances. They wouldn't get anywhere near that money in Prague and other destinations considered.
My guess is the combination of Li Na's success & tennis being an Olympic sport is what drove these deals, which are very lucrative for the WTA.
This is small potatoes for the China government but huge for the WTA. And the Shenzhen deal says they werent disappointed with Wuhan & Beijing. Eventually they will need a player from China playing in big matches
Don't they see how the men complain about equal prize money for unequal sets played... no way they will agree to split their share of $ from the 500s and 250s to the WTA for more "equal prize $." Lawler just wants an easy way out and Simon is definitely not doing anything correct (other than flipping YEC/ET), maybe she should resign just like Allaster.
WTA is desperate even after they secure the 14m deal from China. Not sure if it's WTA worrying about Shenzhen not successful or Shenzhen tournament complaining about not enough exposure and attendance. Does anyone know how many years of contract Shiseido picked up with Shenzhen as the title sponsor? I don't think Shiseido will be interested going forward seeing how horribly attended the event is plus the star player Osaka not caring much.
It seems like Elite Trophy is now stuck and no one is picking up that week of secondary players playing? I wonder how many events in China are also having renewals coming up? Is Guangzhou, Nanchang, Tianjin on the list of contract ending? I know Wuhan's deal is long, not sure if Wuhan wants out? Maybe WTA will now kneel down to Japan hoping they will take that P5 back. There is also the ongoing riot in Hong Kong which makes that event impossible to be played.
ATP isn’t looking to merge with anyone. They are doing quite well on their own. 2021 ATP finals prize money will match WTA and they didn’t have to go to China to do it.
Has WTA released attendance numbers? Are WTA attendance and viewership numbers growing? Anyone know where to get that info?
The ATP season finale attracted 242,883 fans to The O2 across the eight days of competition, bringing the tournament’s cumulative attendance since 2009 to 2,803,967. This year’s attendance at The O2 elevated the attendance across the ATP Tour’s 63 events in 2019 to more than 4.82 million fans, an all-time record. The previous highest attendance had been set in 2017 (4.57 million).
The 2019 Nitto ATP Finals also attracted record audiences online, as the tournament generated unprecedented levels of fan engagement across social and digital media platforms. The event received almost 400m impressions on tournament related content – a 97% increase on 2018. And with 12.4m interactions generated across ATP and Tennis TV social media platforms, the 2019 event became the best performing ATP Tour tournament on social, a 145% increase on the previous year. Tennis TV received 41.24 million video views on social media throughout the tournament, taking the platform’s total views on social media in 2019 to more than 1 billion.
ATP isn’t looking to merge with anyone. They are doing quite well on their own. 2021 ATP finals prize money will match WTA and they didn’t have to go to China to do it.
Has WTA released attendance numbers? Are WTA attendance and viewership numbers growing? Anyone know where to get that info?
The ATP season finale attracted 242,883 fans to The O2 across the eight days of competition, bringing the tournament’s cumulative attendance since 2009 to 2,803,967. This year’s attendance at The O2 elevated the attendance across the ATP Tour’s 63 events in 2019 to more than 4.82 million fans, an all-time record. The previous highest attendance had been set in 2017 (4.57 million).
The 2019 Nitto ATP Finals also attracted record audiences online, as the tournament generated unprecedented levels of fan engagement across social and digital media platforms. The event received almost 400m impressions on tournament related content – a 97% increase on 2018. And with 12.4m interactions generated across ATP and Tennis TV social media platforms, the 2019 event became the best performing ATP Tour tournament on social, a 145% increase on the previous year. Tennis TV received 41.24 million video views on social media throughout the tournament, taking the platform’s total views on social media in 2019 to more than 1 billion.
We have a thread on attendance and its hard to get figures from the WTA only events. The mixed events are doing great. IW, Miami and the slams are having record crowds. Stuttgart is doing well, & Charleston.. The WTA has managed to get a lot of joint events. IW, Miami, mandatories, Cincy plus the majors. Thats a lot of money where the men are the main attractions.
Tiriac is suing the WTA because he doesnt want to pay the women as much as the WTA wants for Madrid
No other sport pays the women like tennis. WNBA is much less than NBA. Women football players are constantly talking about being underpaid
In tennis, any success, even doubles, will make a multi-millionaire
Huge success and you should earn over $20M in your 20s
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