Martina Navratilova, Chris Evert and Majors push back against Saudi’s growing influence in tennis

Last week, The Athletic reported that Tennis Australia executives wrote to the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) that any plans to start a new Masters 1000 event in Saudi Arabia are a “breach of contract” between the two organisations, contending that the season starting entirely in Australia and New Zealand in January is now the norm, and any disruption could be “damaging to player preparation for a Grand Slam.”

The move is the latest tussle in the behind-the-scenes tug-of-war taking place to take control of tennis, that has been accelerated due to – much like other sports – the looming presence of a potentially massive cash infusion from Saudi Arabia.

The overall consensus among all stakeholders seems to be the same: there is more money to be made, and more profit to be squeezed out of tennis as an entertainment product. However, aligning the interests of all of tennis’s centres of power have kept it from keeping pace with the way other sports have gone about doing so. No less than seven bodies – the four Majors, the ATP and Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), and the International Tennis Federation (ITF) – govern the sport across the globe.

But while the two tours have been lured by Saudi investment, the four Grand Slam tournaments are seeking a different route.

Differing proposals
Saudi investment in tennis is already making waves. Last month, the WTA confirmed that the year-end Finals event will take place in Saudi Arabia starting in 2024 on a three-year deal. The Public Investment Fund (PIF) – the Saudi sovereign wealth fund that has an ownership stake in Premier League football club Newcastle United and started the LIV Golf tour – has agreed to a lucrative sponsorship deal with the ATP, including the naming rights to the professional rankings.

Riyadh will host the ‘NextGen’ ATP Finals, the marquee tournament for the young men’s players. Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz played a high-profile exhibition there this year, and Rafael Nadal has signed on to become an ambassador for the Saudi tennis federation.

Their vision is, however, much grander. With a huge cash injection (as high as $2 billion according to British newspaper The Telegraph), they propose to merge the two tours to sell media rights and sponsorships, include more tournaments with both men and women with equal prize money, as well as, crucially, hold a big tournament in Saudi Arabia itself.

Much like in golf, the Saudi plans do not include the four Majors – who themselves have been lobbying for a more radical shift.

The Majors propose a revised ‘Premier Tour’, which included the four Grand Slams and 10 more lucrative combined tournaments with 96-player fields and equal prize money, as well as year-end Finals and an international team tournament. 100 players would qualify each year and, reportedly, 200 other players will play on a lower-rung developmental tour with some sort of relegation and promotion format.

High, equal prize money and a shorter season, as opposed to the current 48-week-long grind, may be the merits of this proposal, but it is still catered entirely to the elite, rendering players outside the very best as fodder to make up places. It also leaves little room for the very few opportunities lower-ranked players possess to stitch together fairytale runs and move up the rankings at lower-level tournaments.

Meek human rights opposition
Opposition to Saudi investment has mostly come on the ground of human rights abuses in the country. Among the players, many have refused to speak on the subject and others have stayed diplomatic, acknowledging women’s issues and also hoping to “spark change.”

Belarusian World No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka, who played an exhibition in Riyadh earlier this year, sees no issues in going back to compete there. Russia’s Daria Kasatkina, an openly gay woman and previously a dissenter, has seen her apprehensions disappear. “We see that the Saudis now are very into the sport, they want to develop the sport… I think it’s great,” she told the BBC.

The most vocal of the high-profile critics, however, have been Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert, who wrote a column in the Washington Post titled ‘We did not help build women’s tennis for it to be exploited by Saudi Arabia.’
Debates over human rights and sportswashing may rage on, but other sports (football, golf, Formula One, et. al) have proven that they are not even a criterion for decision-making among global governing bodies — the strength of any kind of well-intentioned debate crushed by the weight of giant-sized cheques.

Tennis is proving to be no different – human rights were evidently not a criteria for the WTA in deciding the venue for the year-end Finals, the announcement for which coincided with news of the arrest of Manahel al-Otaibi, a young Saudi women’s rights activist, reportedly on grounds of “her choice of clothing and support for women’s rights”.
One way or another, the sport is an open ground for Saudi investment to take over. Seeing the threat, the four Slams have been working together in an “unprecedented way” in an effort “to unlock what we think is an enormous potential”, even while acknowledging that “nothing will take place before 2026”, according to Lew Sherr, the CEO of the U.S. Tennis Association, who shed light on the plans in an interview with Associated Press.

How hard they may resist, and if a compromise is inevitable, remains to be seen as the tussle plays out in the background of tennis’s upcoming busy season.