Addressing critical needs: ATP CEO Eno Polo

0:05Welcome to Addressing Critical Needs, PIF sponsorships in Action, a podcast series from Leaders. My name is James Emmett, and I am the Editorial Director here at Leaders. And I'm David Cushnan, Content Director. Over the course of this series, we're delving into the sponsorship and partnership strategy that's been developed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund to support its increasing activities across the world of sport. In particular, we'll examine the ways in which PIF's sponsorship portfolio across sports like tennis, golf, football, and motorsport and series like the WTA, ATP, Formula E, and E1 has been created and the wider aims underpinning the partnerships.

0:45As you'll hear, the sponsorships are being brought to life by working with partner rights holders to address critical needs within individual sports or more broadly across society. In this episode, we'll hear from Enno Polo, CEO of the ATP, who joined me in the leader studio last month, that's January, to reflect on his first 100 days in the top job and to look ahead to a potentially transformational year for men's tennis and tennis in general in 2026. Mr. Eno Polo, chief executive of the ATP Tour of the ATP? ATP Tour. ATP Tour. You took the role in September, Eno. There's this thing in leadership now where we talk about the first 100 days.

1:28It's a big sort of presidential thing. Like you make an impact in the first 100 days. Talk us through your, you've just done your first 100 days. Talk us through how they went and what your approach to them was. So true, it's my, was, what was, is my first 100 days. Slightly different to previous year roles I took where coming in completely from the outside, I had been on the board of the ATP as a player representative for the past five years. So as I came into my first 100 days, I was very well aware of a lot of the projects and how the ATP tour works and the governance and the product and the people, which is usually what you spend your first 100 days trying to figure out.

2:10Listening and learning. Exactly. But having said that, I still went in the same way I would go into any other company, which was really coming in and being a sponge and listening and learning and taking as much information as I could, especially going down level two, level three, because at the board level, I pretty much knew what was happening. so spending a lot of time on the ground uh talking to our members the players whom i had spent a lot of time with so spending more time with our tournaments and then trying to spend a lot of time actually with the fans trying to understand the experience when i do go to the event these events now i try to enter not with the car but you know where the fans enter and stand in line under the scorching sun and see you know how that experience is so i've been doing a lot of that and just asking and talking to a lot of our stakeholders you know we've got big commercial partners partners media partners data as well and understanding what is it that we can where can i help coming in uh talking to the teams understanding what they're doing um how we can maybe be more efficient more effective and um and that's really been the first hundred days so a big a big notebook full of uh full of notes uh and ready to act so interesting you you do you do use a physical notebook do you to jot stuff down i am old school with a pencil and an eraser good for you man good for you you're not just on a phone just kind of no it's still a notebook if we were to flick through that notebook is there anything that's sort of double underlined and circled in red is there anything that you've noticed about your first 100 days that's really surprised you or that's really made a big impact i wouldn't say surprise i just think you know lots of opportunities uh more than surprises tennis i i would put this is in a pretty good place actually in a very good place from a financial point of view, from partnerships point of view.

3:58And the only one I would say underlined is how can we better work together, which is something that's been on the table for a while. And I say, wow, if in a fragmented environment, we're doing so well, how well would we be doing if we were all pushing the cart in the same direction would be the double underline that I would look at. And then the rest is just more details. We are a global sport. were probably one of the biggest global sports. I mean, I think in every country they played, you know, there's tennis tournaments, they play tennis. And one of them is how do we maintain that global coverage as the calendar gets busier, people are asking for more time off.

4:35So we need to maybe reduce the calendar, but we don't want to move away from certain areas of the world. And so that's the one place I would also look to make sure that we maintain that, you know, global perspective of the sport and working in a more consolidated way. One of the things our audience at Leaders is really interested in is how people get the top jobs in sport. We've got a very ambitious audience and I'm interested in, I know you were very familiar with the ATP, you're sort of an insider player. Can you take us inside the recruitment process that led to you getting the job? I need to go one step back to that is what got me on the board.

5:17And I got on the board of a player representative. And I think I was the first one that actually came on as what the players considered me a non-player. So I did grow up playing Davis Cup for Kenya. I was ranked 500 in the world. But for the top guys, I'm considered a non-player. are. And it was a time where the player council, which is made up of 10 players elected by the wider group of players, they elect their members on the board. And I believe they elected me because I came from the world of business, CEO, brands, understanding consumers, business finances, et cetera, operations. And they put me on the board to have a player representative that could, you know, listen and basically, you know, protect or, you know, be there for their interests.

6:07So I got on the board that way. Once I was on the board, how I then became CEO, I guess that would be a question for the board, why they elected me versus other candidates. But at the time, I think it was also tennis is a very complex world as sports in general, the governance, the product. And at the time, I believe they put me on as CEO because I have that background of understanding the consumer, understanding business, strategic, long-term visions. I was on the board as well. So they knew me. They knew me on the board as a player representative, but I often had the discussions to think about what's the long-term vision of the ATP and what does a fan want?

6:47I guess the next question is why the board elected me, but they then decided to put me on and here I am. Was there a sort of exter or third-party recruiter involved? Do you know how many other candidates got to a certain stage? What was the, I guess, interview? What did you have to do to prove yourself? Again, I was not involved in those discussions, even though I was on the board because it was conflicted. But yes, they did hire a search firm. I believe as all search firms, they started with a wide list of candidates that was then brought down to 10, interviewed, down to five, interviewed, and I believe we came down to three final of one.

7:27There were a couple of internal candidates, including myself. I was considered internal and external candidates. And then the board made the interview process. So I went through a couple of rounds of interviews. I didn't go through the initial rounds because usually internal candidates, you tend to know them. So you don't have to ask their name or where they're from. So you avoid those first rounds, But you do on the last rounds, I was interviewed by the board twice and then the board made their decision. Great. What do you see as the major issue? I mean, you've already talked about the general strength of tennis.

8:01And I would agree with you, even though tennis is one of the most complicated stakeholder environments in sport, I think there is a general positivity and people are generally pulling in the same direction in tennis at the moment. But what do you see, having observed and asked a lot of questions over these last 100 days, what do you see as the major issues facing the ATP, men's tennis in particular this year? And what are your strategic priorities? I would say the three main priorities that we've got listed, one is the product. The other one is the aggregation of our commercial rights together with the women's, because right now we're separate.

8:40it. And the third is how can we consolidate the governing bodies and work closer together, which this is one that we've been working on for a while. If I go to product, what's our product? Our product obviously is composed of many things. Like any company, companies need to look at their product line. Are they heading in the right direction? Price points, designs, consumer connections. And that's what we need to do in tennis. So we've got a master's thousands coming into the calendar in 2028, the tents. And this is time to relook at our whole product. We've been hearing from players that the off season's too short, correctly so.

9:16So we're relooking that whole product is definitely a priority. And then while we're at it, we should be looking at the ranking breakdowns. We should be looking at how we're distributing the money. We're not gonna change the game of tenant. We're not gonna change the scoring system, but it's a good time to reflect on every single point, not just the lengths of the calendar, but look at it across the whole board. The other priority is obviously what we've been calling tennis ventures which is we've been working with the WTA in terms of aggregating the commercial rights, the media rights, the data rights.

9:48So it's been a lot of work going on in that. If that was to happen, there would be a lot of work in terms of consolidating the teams, putting it in motion. It's basically a merger and mergers can take a year to implement and they need to be done well. So that would be a big priority this year if it was to happen. And hopefully it will happen. We'll see. And like I said, the last but not least is working with the SLAMs, working with the WTA, with the ITF in terms of how we can, you know, work on better governance across the sport. And then, you know, working together on the product because the product affects everybody, the calendar, the players, and those would be the two inside the consolidation.

10:29So more cohesion across the controlling entities in tennis, movement in the stated intention to combine commercial rights with the WTA, and then some tweaking to the product on the tour itself, just to summarize. Yeah, I think, you know, tweaking and it might be, you know, some bigger changes on the, but we always tweak the product every year. We're always changing, you know, we just came out with a heat rule. You know, we're, you know, we're coming up with, you know, whether suspension rules or bonuses or, you know, we're always tweaking the product. But, but I think here it's good to, you know, take a look back and, you know, do the white piece of paper strategy on where, you know, what would, what should the calendar look like in 2028?

11:11What should the distribution, the ranking breakdowns? and then look where we are and what we can actually implement. In your view and your experience in tennis, stretching back much further than your time in this top job, what do you think the general appetite is for radical change in tennis? You talk about the issue that players often bring up about kind of burnout to too much tennis and you sort of illustrate the challenge there because it's not too much for lots of them. Is there appetite for radical change? a change to tournament structure, maybe not having straight knockout formats? It's a radical change.

11:49It depends what's, you know, in sports that are so traditional, right? You know, just putting a video review at a goalpost for some sports is a radical change, whereas for a startup sport, you know, technology, it depends how you look at it. I wouldn't say, you know we're looking at radical changes in terms of you know the shortening the game to one set or taking away one serve or you know changing the rules at that level I think it would be in terms of how often other players playing should they be playing as many matches but I wouldn't call it radical no not yet I don't think we're I don't think we need to on the other hand as well I mean tennis you know is in a great place we see all all the you know the numbers the fan attendance You know, we've got record attendance this year again at our tournaments.

12:39We're reaching a billion viewers. We, you know, our financials are in a good spot. You know, I don't think there's any need right now. You know, everything's pointing in the right direction. But having said that, changes do need to be made radical. I don't think we need to just yet. You talk about the second strategic priority being the effective merger with the WTA. Now, this is just on the commercial side. It's not on the kind of playing administrative side, I guess. I remember that news coming out a couple of years ago, I think it was, this intention to merge. What has been done thus far and what is the block to getting it ultimately kind of settled?

13:22Like any merger, there's a lot of details. I mean, conceptually, it obviously makes sense. And actually, we do work quite closely with the WTA. We have a live app that is a combination of the WTA. Our marketing teams work closely on content, social media, officiating teams, medical teams. We share a lot of information. So we already are, you know, working closely with them. We have a lot of combined events with them. So, you know, scheduling and I was in Australia, the Australian Open offices are next door to each other. We're talking to them all the time. So I think it's a great relationship.

14:00It's just that, you know, when it comes to the business side, you know, the media, the commercial, we've obviously already got contracts in place. So we're already selling our data through a company. They're selling through a different company. Our contract ends on this date. Their contract ends on that date. What's the valuation of ours versus theirs? Is there more growth in women's tennis over the next 10 years than in men's tennis? That takes a while. And I think I wouldn't call it a blocking stone. I think it's just a question of understanding the numbers, getting, you know, we've obviously worked with external consultants to look at the valuation and then finding a deal that is fair.

14:35And like all big contracts or deals, there's a lot of number crunching and understanding. And I think that's where we are right now. And that's why it's taken a bit longer than what people would have wanted, but for all the good reasons. Can you see that happening this year, ideally? Look, I really would like it to happen. There's complications in some of the contracts that have been signed. If it's not this year, is it next year? But I believe eventually we should be working together. Tennis is one of the unique sports in the world where you can put men and women on the same court. You've seen it at the United Cup, which is before the Australian Open.

15:08You've got the men and women sitting on the same team, pushing each other. They end up on a mixed doubles. The US Open did a great mixed doubles event. Not many sports can do that. They put the men and women on a playing field and have the stadium full. And tennis is unique. I mean, you know, from before, whether it was Serena Williams and Roger Federer, I mean, you would watch those two, you know, you'd be happy to watch them playing on the same court. So we should make the most of that. we have a unique position and not using it and maximizing it would be a shame. Yeah. Of course, one of the things that the ATP shares with the WTA is a partnership with the PIF in Saudi Arabia, the PIF definitely putting tennis as one of its sort of strategic priorities to support.

15:56Talk me through the ATP partnership with PIF. What do they do for you? What do you do for then? PIF confirms everything I just said. The fact that PIF is investing heavily in tennis, both on the WTA and the ATP, confirms everything I was just mentioning. And to have a partner like PIF just again shows that tennis is doing well and it's a good place because they're investing in the global sports of the future. PIF is a great partner to have. I mean, they invest all across the tennis. So they work with our tournaments. So we have tournament packages for them. They're involved in many of our tournaments, including the ATP finals.

16:35They also invest in our players. So they have play ambassadors. So they have Feast, Berrettini and others to come. So that's good for our players as well. They're a big partner of NextGen, which is the future of our tennis, the under 20s, which is great to see them investing in the future. They are also, as they are for the WTA, the ranking sponsor for the ATP. and then you know they've invested in tennis iq 2.0 which is the whole data which is really great so if when you look at it they're really a 360 investor and then you know they really work across the whole spectrum of the sport yeah uh it strikes me that one of the things that pif have really set out to do with most of their sports partnerships to be honest is to try to solve challenges that the athletes themselves encounter, and they do that in the WTA through the maternity fund.

17:32Clearly, Tennis IQ is a big sort of unique property, I guess, or a unique asset that they can help to develop and to use. Can you tell us a little bit more about what Tennis IQ is and how it has helped so far? Yeah, Tennis IQ is really the whole gathering of data of the players. So in a simplified format, it can tell you how fast, how hard you're hitting a forehand, the percentages of the ball in, of your serve percentage. And it's got all the statistics of the player, of yourself, but also of all the other opponents. So PIF has invested in Tennis IQ. It's Tennis IQ powered by PIF. And thanks to their investment, we've been able to develop it a lot more because obviously it's a high cost in terms of gathering all of this data and just, you know, even getting the data with, you know, different cameras and all of that on the courts.

18:28But most importantly, they've been able to democratize the product. Before, it just went to a few selected players because of the cost. And thanks to their partnership, now, you know, it's a lot of players can use it, coaches can use it. This data will revolutionize the sport, I believe, in the future. It will definitely revolutionize the way coaches coach. Already, we've made changes where now coaches can talk to the players before they couldn't. But 10 years from now, I wouldn't be surprised that, you know, we've got coaches with headsets and iPads like the NFL, you know, looking at screens and the players coming over and looking at, you know, and the tactical game will change.

19:08I mean, it will be interesting to see how that evolves. And how do you see the partnership? with the PIF developing? We've got a partnership with them till 2029. I would like to see that developing further. We're going to be going into the Masters 1000 in Saudi Arabia in 2028. They're obviously going to be a big part of that. So we're looking forward to a long-term relationship with them. What's the latest on that new tournament? Is there a date in the calendar that sort of says, do we know where it's going to fall? Yeah, no, we know it's going to be in 2028. They are actually, as we speak, constructing the site.

19:47You know, we're looking forward to an incredible stadium. You can imagine they can start from scratch, take the learnings of all the other tennis events around the world from the slams to the thousands. So that's going to be amazing. Is that Riyadh? Yeah, it's going to be in Riyadh. It's 2028. We do not know yet the date. And that's part of the product work we're doing in 2026, in terms of finding a space in the calendar that would make sense for the tournament, for the players and all our other members, all the other tournaments as well. Yeah. We're coming up to halfway through the Australian Open, which is going on over the other side of the world right now.

20:22You've just got back from Australia looking remarkably fresh. How was it? And how would you characterize that particular Grand Slam? It seems like it's getting a lot of love in the industry at the moment. Look, all the slams are doing a great job, but Australia specifically, they do a great job in terms of servicing the players. So if I look at it purely from our members' point of view, the way they treat the players, great. I mean, they're all about the players' comfort and making everything they can to satisfy the players on site. But more importantly, they are probably the slam that has the best fan connection, the best entertainment.

21:01When I was walking in, again, walking in through the fan entrance and standing in line with them and walking, it felt like I was walking into the Disney of tennis. You had, you know, you had all these people and entertainment. And, you know, if I was a kid, I wouldn't make it past there to the courts. I would stay all day and play around. So they've created that incredible fan experience, which is a great learning for everybody else. And they've, again, brokered all attendances this year. So great job on their side. They're really fun and they've got stuff for all ages, concerts and bars and music for the adults and for the kids.

21:38So no, really good job. You mentioned this earlier in terms of, you know, one of your strategic priorities being fostering this greater sense of cohesion between the two tours and the Grand slams and the ITF and all the major stakeholders in tennis. But it seems to me that the way that tennis governance and the tennis ecosystem is set up is, of course, there must be cohesion and there must be sort of working together. But also there is a competitive tension and a competitive balance between all the various entities involved. The slams must exist in a state of sort of cohesion, but also competitive tension with the tours.

22:19And I wonder how you would characterize the current relationship between the ATP and the various slams. It's funny when we say some type of competition. At the end of the day, we're already working very closely together. Similar to what I was saying about the WTA, the fact, you know, even our marketing teams are working very, you look at the slams. I mean, we've got before the Australian Open, we've got a couple of tournaments, there's a United Cup that goes on. So we work on the United Cup. That's a great example. United Cup is a combination of the Tennis Australia, WTA and the ATP coming together and putting that event.

22:54So we're all three working on that one. Then we have a couple of tournaments. We got Adelaide before Brisbane. Again, we work very closely with Tennis Australia on those. So we work with the organizers of the slam. The same thing with the French Federation and Paris Masters de France and the USTA. I think, you know, there will always be the four slams, will always be the biggest tour. No one's trying to compete and create 15 slams. Of course not. There will always be the four slams and we want them to be the four slams. And there will be the masters below them and then the 500s and the 250s. And I think it makes sense.

23:27And you see that in other sports, you've got, you know, division one, two, three in football and, you know, Formula One, Formula Two. So we're not trying to change that. I think it's just a question of how do we come together and take decisions together and actually be that pyramid where you've got the pinnacle at the top and you've got the challenges at the bottom, but it's one product. And if you look in, you work for a brand, whether, you know, a footwear brand, you have your pinnacle shoe at the top at$500 and you've got your, you know,$20 shoe, $30 shoe that's sold in the wide distribution at the bottom, but it's the same brand.

24:01And what about the current relationship with the players? I think the players are, again, you'll always have, it's an individual sport. Overall, what's the atmosphere in the players? And I think the players from what I'm getting, they feel like they're in a good place. I think, you know, Andrea and the leadership team have done a great job and that's obviously before I've arrived. But, you know, when we look at the changes we've made and the compensations that they're getting, you know, we've reached$400 million of compensation for the players of which, you know, $130 million of that is a slams.

24:30So the biggest part, 70 % is coming from the ATP. We've increased prize money. They're getting the bonus pools are growing significantly. They've now got a variable bonus pool. you know we've we've increased tremendously the amount of money at the challenger level there's still work to do so i think from a financial point of view they're starting to feel the difference in their in their pocket again we talked about the calendar for some players it's long the players have a very strong representation in the atp they you know no decisions are made without the players and i think that's important people people you know have been complaining that the players don't have a voice but i i was a representative of the player and i can tell you that on the board the board is divided four player board members and four tournament board members and nothing gets voted unless the players agree.

25:16You could argue the opposite, nothing gets voted unless the tournaments agree, but the players have a veto on all decisions if they don't want it to go through. Yeah. Before you became CEO of the ATP, you had a short stint as CEO of Premier Paddle. And I wonder, there's a sort of existential question going on at the moment in the tennis and paddle worlds of kind of what should the relationship between those two sports look like? Having been inside both of them, what's your view on where tennis and paddle should sit alongside each other? And before that, I was also involved in paddle through a private equity on what I would call on the consumer side of paddle.

25:56The reason I say that is because I think there's two sides of the relationship. There's a relationship at what I would call the high level professional sport, and as a relationship as at the consumer participation. I would say there needs to be a very strong relationship at the consumer participation. Here, we got to look at ourselves as a racket sport. Again, we fragment tennis. I would say, let's use the strengths and say, you know, if you look at racket, there should be racket clubs where you can go play tennis, you can play paddle, you can play pickleball if you're in the US or if pickleball shows up in Europe.

26:32and because anybody who's getting a racket in their hand and hits a ball at one point will want to try different racket sports. Once you get that eyeball coordination, it's fun to try different things, whether it's squash or beach tennis or even just knocking a ball on the beach. Anyone who's playing tennis loves that. So I see that as we should integrate a lot more. Now, the ATP is not involved as much as the ITF is in the promotion of the sport at the grassroots level. So I would push the ITF and the paddle federations and pickleball federations to work closely together. At the professional side, I would say there isn't much integration there.

27:10Yes, I was in paddle. Paddle is a very new sport. It's, you know, it's been huge in Spain and Argentina. It will take time before it becomes truly global. I believe that, you know, they have huge space to grow. But yeah, I think there's a huge opportunity for them. Yes, we should be working together with all racket sports for our participation point of view, because that's where we need to be getting our consumers. Do you personally play more paddle or tennis? No, I play more tennis. Okay. I lived in Spain from 2006, so I got into paddle because everybody plays paddle. I definitely enjoy playing paddle, but if I can choose, I'm still fit enough to get on a tennis court and I enjoy playing tennis.