What would a tennis merger achieve? And what now for Wasserman?

0:03Hello and welcome to Worth Knowing, the sports industry podcast from Leaders where we talk about what's worth knowing in the business of sport this week. I'm Leaders Editorial Director James Emmett. And I'm Content Director David Cushnan. On the show this week, a tennis doubleheader as we reflect on conversations we've had this week with the CEOs of the ATP and WTA ventures. What next for the Wasserman Agency as founder Casey looks to sell. And why US sports leagues are busy starting, well, new sports leagues. This is Leaders Worth knowing hello david how are you doing i'm very well james how are you i'm good thanks i'm enjoying the winter olympics are you i'm in you're in yeah just a few days left and you're in i'm in can't wait for the closing ceremony in verona is it oh yeah uh what are you what are you enjoying in particular what sports biathlon you and i watched a little bit of the bath on at lunchtime yesterday we did it's a great sport it's the most sapping sport globally surely yeah probably yeah Probably.

1:07Big, massive sports slash sports events that just do not make an impact at any point in the UK. Well, that's the fun of the Olympics, really, isn't it? Biathlon would be right up there. Some of these stadiums in lots of places in Europe are incredible. The fans are absolutely mad for it. Yeah. Do you remember when we were at Sports Prayer and we had just started the 50 most marketable athletes and we put a biathlete on it? Do you remember that? Yeah. Not the strangest thing we did with Statler. Swedish bloke. Yeah. Yeah. How did he do? It's hard to remember, isn't it? Different days. Different days.

1:46No, it's been great, the Winter Olympics. I think everybody has talked about the coverage endlessly. Droning on about the coverage. Droning on about the coverage. But it has been, I think, as a sort of feast for the eyes and ears, a real treat over the past couple of weeks. And we wait to see what, from an operational standpoint, the IOC will take from this as it gathers all sorts of information. Definitely logistical challenges, more dispersed games, as we have talked about. Some suggestions that one of the impacts of that has been that the IOC has effectively sort of inadvertently passed on a lot of the operational costs to broadcasters, to sponsor partners.

2:30So there's a lot to work through for Christophe Duby and the team after that. And there's many reports that there's a good deal of concern about the organisation of the next winter games in the French Alps 2030. Some definite movement there in terms of the people who will be leading that and running that from here on. So, yeah, the Winter Olympics as a topic, I think, will not disappear when the games end on Sunday. No, indeed. We have got, we're in the middle of a tennis special this week, aren't we, David? It's all tennis at the moment, isn't it? Over here on the Leaders Worth Knowing feed, we've got our rackets out and we are, do you know what?

3:05We're knocking up. Have you listened to the interviews that we've got out on the feed? Yes, I have. Marina Storty, CEO of WTA Ventures and Enno Polo, the newly installed CEO of the ATP Tool. Great to have them both in as a sort of double header, both brought together for a series that we're running with the PIF on sort of examining the impact that the PIF is managing or at least attempting to have really focused on athlete needs across the various sports that the PIF, the Saudi Investment Fund, across its sponsorship portfolio. It's the only sponsor, it's the only non-endemic sponsor, I think, that covers both the WTA and the ATP.

3:46I think I'm right in saying that. And yeah, really great to have these two leaders on the same week. And I think both of them in their own ways give a really nice window into what the tennis world, the key challenges that the tennis world is facing this year. Yeah, really enjoyed both conversations. And I guess for slightly, slightly different reasons. I thought Marina, and I think it's fair to say, James, we're both fans of Marina and think she's excellent. And I thought she was particularly good as she was talking about the corporate mission of the WTA and WTA ventures at the moment that is really fueled by this bigger passion and belief in the power of women's sport and how that is and has been translated into, amongst other things, the huge deal with Mercedes-Benz, which was signed off and announced at the end of last year, but also with the relationship with PIF and the maternity fund that has come into effect that is a first for a sports organization and a game changer for many of the players either now or in the future on the WTA tour.

4:57And then Enno, I think, was really strong on and very open, actually, as he comes into the job. And as he made very clear, he's not coming into this job completely blind. He's sat on the ATP board for some time. He's very au fait with how the ATP works. He's already a tennis insider. Correct. So his first 100 days has not been the same as many CEOs' first 100 days. He's been able to actually probably move a bit quicker because he has a good knowledge of the organisation and the sport. I thought he was really open on the continuing, and at least from the outside, what seems to be quite convoluted conversations about the merger, the proposed merger between the ATP and the W2A and what form that takes.

5:41And he was very candid that there's simply some contractual challenges around when particular contracts end that make it a difficult thing to pull off from a timing perspective. But I thought reading slightly between the lines of what he was saying, it felt to me like there is still this challenge that the two organizations have and they're not necessarily completely aligned on who should have the biggest slice of the pie when it comes to this merger, who is the lead partner in this merger. And I think, although it was unsaid, I suspect the biggest area of non-alignment at the moment is because the ATP is looking for a larger slice based on what it believes its value is versus the WTA.

6:30Yeah, well, I think this is a really interesting area. And if Eno has this way, he's very clear and very open about it being, you know, one of his key strategic priorities as the new leader is to essentially, I guess, make his role defunct quite quickly by getting this merger together and off the ground this year. So I do think this area is fascinating, the idea of the ATP and the WTA coming together. So this was first reported on as the willingness of both parties to do this came to light in 2024, just a few months after Marina Storty had been appointed as the CEO of WTA Ventures, the new commercial arm for the WTA, set up for it by the investment group that has a stake in the WTA.

7:17CVC. A really interesting timing because since Marina, and as you say, Dave, we're big Marina fans with a Storty Tifosi over here. Since she's taken the reins and built out her team, WTA, WTA Ventures specifically have had a number of big commercial wins. The Mercedes deal chief amongst them, that is a$500 million 10-year deal. Which is an enormous statement. Huge. And commercially, at least, the WTA is absolutely on the right path. So to go through with this merger kind of complicates a situation which is in a positive kind of momentum and direction anyway. I think you're right about discussions around how to split up this combined pie.

8:08It's my understanding that the merger has been called Tennis Ventures. It's my understanding that what that looks like structurally is a combined commercial unit, but beneath that sits separate entities, administrative entities that run the respective tours. So the ATP tour will remain the same. The WTA tour will remain the same. It's just the commercial body that sits over the top. The budgets, how much the players get paid, at least in the first instance, remain as they are today. And the idea is that the revenues are split according to what the current budgets are. And anything that is made above that, they sort of argue, they argue the toss on that.

8:54But currently, the way things stand, I think the ATP tour players, it's about 70 % more prize money, at least, and revenue in general that the ATP drives. The WTA is sort of catching up, but not at the rate that's going to see them draw level anytime soon. And also there is how these two tours at the moment and maybe one combined entity in the form that you've mentioned works in the wider context of the tennis world where we have the four Grand Slams who are all incredibly powerful individually and to some extent in some areas much more aligned as a four, an awesome foursome. and you have the International Tennis Federation, which sort of sits over the top from a rulemaking point of view and a Davis Cup and a Billie Jean King Cup point of view.

9:41Then you have the two tours. Combine them, theoretically, they become a more significant and more influential entity in those wider conversations about things like how tennis as a sport is structured from a calendar point of view how the role that the players have in big decisions that are made about the sport and it's worth saying that the wta and atp they are not existing completely separately at the moment they're collaborating i think no um was talking about it very much so on across social and digital projects and channels they are collaborating on the live scores app that um both tours utilize and are part of there's numerous tournaments and they're also combining at some of the biggest tournaments on each of the tours, the 1 ,000 events.

10:31So the players get paid. The majority of earnings that a player will make on the ATP or the WTA come from the tournaments that they participate in on the tour, not the Grand Slams, even though the prize money at the Grand Slams is obviously bigger. In both tours, in slightly separate ways, a big challenge is the idea of player burnout. The fact that the calendar is too full, is too challenging, there's too much travel, there are too many commitments placed on the players. And Eno was very open about the fact that this is a situation that needs to be solved. And there is a lot that goes into this, the idea that in order to drive revenue, you need to go to new exciting places where there might be money for you to come aka Saudi Arabia in tennis but at the same time reduce the amount of commitment that the players have at the top end at least where they're getting through to the finals routinely at the bottom end there's not enough tennis for you know tour professionals to kind of earn a living it's a really challenging thing this is happening both the ATP and the WTA there's been a development this week on the WTA to that end which I'll let you explain but the idea of these tours coming together would make it much more straightforward, at least to tackle this big issue in tennis together in a unified way.

11:58Absolutely. And it's come into sharp focus that point around the congestion of the calendar and player burnout this week. A huge, unusually large number of withdrawals and retirements from the WTA event taking place out in Dubai this week. And it's prompted some fairly strong words from the tournament director, who is obviously paying a fee to the WTA to host this event. And there's an expectation. It's a 500 series event, I think. And there's an expectation that at least some of the top players are part of that event. There's been a particularly high withdrawal rate this coming just a few weeks after the Australian and open and it's prompted some really quick action from the WTA and a letter, an open letter from the chair, Valerie Camillo, who is just recently installed into that role where she's talked about over her first 90 days, there's been a clear sentiment across the tour that the current calendar does not feel sustainable for players given the physical, professional and personal pressures of competing at the highest level.

13:04Important, we take a fresh collaborative look how to best preserve the high quality competition that builds value for tournaments and provides an unparalleled experience for fans so what she's done is she's established something called a tour architecture council which will be a working group put together by the wta and it will include a number of experts a number of stakeholders from across the world of tennis to be chaired I think intriguingly by a player, by Jess Pagula, the world number six American player. And she will be chairing this alongside Valerie Camillo, the chair of WTA Tour and WTA Ventures, and Portia Archer, who is the CEO of the WTA itself, as distinct from the commercial arm that Marina Storty runs.

13:53Tournament representatives on this council as well, as well as the WTA Tour's head of strategy and senior VP of member relations and its operational chief as well. The vision for this council is to convene, do the work, understand all the considerations at play here, but potentially make changes implemented as soon as the 2027 season. So this is, you know, this is edging towards the kind of potentially the kind of radical change that Enno was talking about in your conversation with him, where you asked him the question, sort of, you know, how ready is tennis for radical change? And he, to be honest, he outlined the challenges with doing so.

14:41I mean, I'm sure this new group, the Tour Architecture Council at the WTA will examine all the options available to them. But just from the outside, at least, it seems that tennis is wedded to a format that requires lots of players to enter. They don't have to have the straight knockout format. There are other sort of round robin type formats that would require fewer players, but you would still get the same length of event. I'm sure there are lots of options that they're looking at. A thing to remember in all of this, as the players, as any worker probably, sort of put forward their demands for more pay and less work.

15:18The thing to remember is the tennis tours, probably above any other global sporting series or tour, they're a driver of ticket sales for the events they're hosting. They're one to two week events. That's where really the fundamentals of the money, the revenues are driven. So ticket sales fuel the promoters. That's where the promoters get their money. That's what enables the promoters to pay the tours to be on the tours. It's a fundamental business model. And you've got some of the figures from a few, you know, to give us an idea of the numbers being driven by these tournaments. Yeah, you talk about one or two week events.

15:59One of the changes that has been made in the last couple of years, again, which has created a little bit more congestion in the calendar and more commitment required from the players, the top players in particular, is some of these 1000 series events have actually been expanded from one week to two weeks, which is from a tournament point of view, you can understand why they might want to do that, spread out the matches, get more people into the stadiums, buying tickets. but it has created you know yet more challenges in terms of the calendar and how that works it is though important to remember that i think the 1000 series events which is the top tier you have the 1000 the 500 and the 250 levels of events on the tours the 1000 series events some of them are incredibly well attended so if you look at uh indian wells the bmp paribas tournament The so-called fifth slam.

16:54504 ,000 people attended that event in 2025. The Miami Open held on the grounds of the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, 404 ,000 people attending. So these are enormous sporting events. They don't necessarily have the kind of the mainstream cut through of grand slams. In fact, they certainly don't, but they do pack a punch in terms of being very popular and a huge driver of ticket sales. People want to see the top players in action more often. So there is this sort of tension within tennis and we see it in other sports. But I do think it feels particularly pronounced at the moment in tennis. I guess particularly because at Grand Slams you are seeing and you saw one of those matches, you know.

17:48five set matches at Grand Slams can run for sort of four or five hours if they go to five sets, but particularly on the men's side. So this is a grueling sport at the very highest level and burnout is a genuine issue. And one small clarification, the Dubai WTA tournament this week where we've had all the withdrawals, that is a 1000 series event on the WTA tour, 500 series for the men's tournament. Okay. I guess an option open to the promoters of these tournaments is to take a leaf out of the Grand Slam books, especially the Australian Open, and think of these things as two-week sort of festivals and start to program things around the tennis that are going to get people through the gates.

18:36I think there's a challenge. I spent a bit of time a couple of years ago with all the tournament directors from the ATP. Of course you did. Yes, they did. And one of the biggest challenges there is because you do have this tiering, 1 ,500, 250, what the 250 tournament organizers want. And they know that they are not going to get Sina and Alcaraz coming to play in their tournaments, but they want to have a smattering of top 10, top 20 players to be able to fuel the whole thing. Well, they'll pay appearance fees. And they will pay appearance fees, but they don't have limitless budgets to do so. So what they are, are critical tournaments for, and also in lots of cases, again, very well attended tournaments, but they're critical to fuel the whole ranking system as you talked about, the sort of top 150, 200 players in the world.

19:24And they have completely different needs to the tournament director at Indian Wells, who is frankly planning, organizing, is ambitious enough to consider their tournament to be the fifth Grand Slam. So that is another challenge that Eno and his team at the ATP and also, you know, Marina and Portia Archer on the WTA side face. Almost competing needs demands from the tournament organisers who are, again, absolutely just as much as the players are, critical stakeholder groups. So it's a sport that has such a lot going for it. And we talked about it and you were there at the Grand Slams. The Grand Slams are incredible.

20:05I think they're right up there. And I do think over the last two or three years, all four Grand Slams have really found their place and cut through. And each of them has their own style and such a lot of stuff they do brilliantly. Yeah. And I think the events themselves, the Grand Slams themselves, have moved beyond tennis. Yes. So in a way that 10 years ago, we were sort of worried what happens at the end of this amazing era in men's tennis where we move away from Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, etc. because that will happen at one point. It's happened now. It feels like, well, the Grand Slams have stepped up and they are events that you want to watch in their own right, regardless of who's playing.

20:46Yeah. Just going back to what Enno was saying about radical change, it did strike me from a leadership point of view, and he sort of slightly alluded to this in the conversation. The merger may or may not happen, but everybody seems to be working towards it happening and being announced at some point. But you do have to, as a leader of one of these organizations, I think, go into that with a genuine mindset that you as a leader might not come out to the other side. You have to be willing to sort of almost put yourself on the line as the disruptor, as the change maker. And that's challenging and it opens you up to criticism from any angle, public or internal.

21:25And so I think if somebody like Eno coming into this role does genuinely have that kind of mindset and approach, that is probably a very healthy thing, but it is a very hard thing from a sort of personal career path, personal ambition point of view, to get into that position, I think. I think it's one of the real challenges of leadership at that level when you are on the cusp of pretty fundamental change.

21:55quick break from the show but if you're a senior leader in sport this is a message for you leaders meet innovation our two-day event experience taking place at 180 studios in london is just around the corner on stage and in the room on the 11th and 12th of march you'll find senior executives from the likes of the guardian eurovision song contest arsenal football club Kansas City Royals, Pizza Express and McLaren F1. And you can join them in a range of facilitated, targeted discussions across the two days. To find out more and to snap up one of our limited remaining passes, head to leadersinsport.com forward slash innovation.

22:33That's leadersinsport.com forward slash innovation.

22:40Bits and pieces have been happening in the sports world, David. Let me tell you about one or two or even three of them iris sports media the agency run by former img president um yoris francini has signed a multi-games deal with the ioc for in-flight and on-ship media rights which enlivens a category that since 2012 has been dominated by yoris francini's old shop img which has Sport24. Iris' deal runs until Brisbane 2032. Golf influencer Paige Spironat has gone into business with ProShop, the golf content business set up by Chad Mumm, the creator of Netflix's Full Swing, and she's going to launch her own media company, Paige Co., which will be a home for new shoes, new shows, and branded content.

23:40Who knows? Could be shoes as well. Chris Brown is the new Chief Commercial Officer at New Zealand Rugby with interim CEO Steve Lancaster continuing in the role while the organisation recruits its next leader. Former NFL executive Dawn Aponte has been confirmed as the new SVP of Football Operations and Strategy at the New York Giants. Significant move in the NFL ranks. Melissa Chapman has joined two circles in a new and very senior role group executive director of content. She arrives from Jungle Creations, where she has been CEO for a good number of years. And Fanjul has hired former Paramount Plus executive Ari Avershay as SVP of marketing.

24:25Sport England has adjusted its leadership team with Lisa Dodd, Maine, becoming executive director of partnerships and place. And Phil Smith will take the role of executive director sporting system. Meanwhile, Julia White has been promoted to the role of global head of sports partnerships at TikTok. She takes over that role from Rollo Goldstaub, who has been moved up to global head of sport. Congratulations to one and all. Lovely to recognise people who are moving on up, eh? James, there's a big story this week, really dominating, I think, the sports industry and beyond. particularly in Los Angeles, where Casey Wasserman says he's begun the process of divesting his 40 % stake in the Wasserman agency.

25:13This following the release of email conversations between him and Jeffrey Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell, dating back to 2003. off the back of this being made public, some high profile talent, Chapel Roan, the pop star, the music star, Abbey Wambach, football star, of course, both decided to leave the agency and went public to do so. And making it very clear that the reason wasn't anything to do with the agency or their superb representation, which they both made a point of noting, but simply to do with the fact that Casey Wasserman was sitting at the top of it and they didn't want to be represented by that person anymore.

25:59A memo followed from Casey Wasserman to Wasserman's 4 ,000 staff apologising, saying that he believed he'd become a distraction and announcing that Mike Watt, the COO of Wasserman, will be taking over day-to-day control and a sales process will be getting underway, which becomes a really interesting moment from a sports industry point of view. Obviously, not all of what Wasserman does is in the sports industry by any means. And indeed, a lot of the current conversation around and speculation around who might be interested in buying Wasserman is focused on the big Hollywood agencies. Yeah. But we have Providence Capital, who is the majority owner of Wasserman and has been since 2022.

26:50And they now have some decisions to make about exactly how this sales process takes place. Some reporting that it may look to, first of all, buy Casey Wasserman out and then look to rebrand the agency and perhaps sell it on wholesale. Or there is another option, which is a much more sort of piecemeal approach. Strip it for parts. Strip it for parts, which is actually, to some extent, to a fairly large extent, how Wasserman has built up over time. If you think about some of the acquisitions that he has made, even just in the sports space, CSM. When was that? Two, three years ago. And there's been a period of integration since then.

27:35and the CSM name, I think just about being sunsetted anywhere. And certainly if this is going to be split apart and there are sports specific strands made available or put on the market, I think there's going to be a lot of interest given the status, the client base, the expertise that sits within that agency. Yeah, for sure. It's a definite watch this space scenario. And actually, you know, clearly Casey Wasserman's hand has been forced here. There is potentially a sort of knockdown price available for the right buyer. It certainly seems like a sale will be happening at some speed. Yeah, exactly.

28:21Let's move on and talk about another interesting bit of news coming out of the US this week. We're obviously in the afterglow of the Super Bowl, as we talked about last week. But the NFL is moving forward with future plans, which include the launch of a professional flag football league, which they've been talking about for some time is definitely linked in some way to flag football being part of the Olympics in 2028 and the prospect of NFL players being part of that tournament. There is a definite appetite from the NFL's point of view to use flag football as the entry point at a grassroots level and beyond to football, to American football.

29:16And this week, they've hired Tomorrow Sports to operate this league, to be their partner in bringing it to life. Tomorrow Sports, of course, is the organization founded by or co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. Mike McCarley is the executive, the guy who is the brains behind the operation. And this is an interesting moment in a very similar way to what the NBA is doing, where we are seeing major US sports leagues, the major leagues, increasingly looking to create new IP, which obviously brings with it lots of commercial potential, significant investment, of course, but the opportunity to spread their wings in terms of geography, but also in terms of owning, I think, more of the space within their sport.

30:11Yeah. It's interesting this because, as you say, it's sort of spread across all of the major leagues. It's not just the NFL or the NBA. The NHL is doing it as well. And it seems to me that the American sports leagues, above any other globally relevant rights holder organization, talk about growing the game, growing their respective games internationally, just growing the game. That's the mission in a kind of slightly purer than thou kind of way. We're not all about commercial growth. We're about the good of the sport and growing it and, you know, building participation, etc. Which, of course, is code for, you know, the natural extension of that is if the game is grown, if the game of the NFL is grown around the world through flag football taking off, it builds participation.

31:02It builds popularity for the sport. at the very top of the sport sits the NFL, all eyeballs are rooted to there and revenue can be generated. It makes a sort of, you know, the flywheel makes sense. It's strange because we don't really have that type of conversation outside of the US, the International Sports Federations. It's their mission to grow the game. And it's the individual leagues mission to kind of grow their brands and export a certain type of that game to people around the world. So, in many ways, it's just the next iteration, what's happening now of something that's being talked about in America for some time.