ATP Tour set for big overhaul and what comes next could change tennis forever

The ATP Tour has announced big changes to its schedule for 2025, with the latest innovations likely to be the prelude to the biggest change the sport has seen in its history.

It has been confirmed that the Canadian Open and Cincinnati Open will expand to 12-day events in 2025, bringing it in line with seven of the nine ATP Masters 1000 events that have an extended format.

The total of ATP 500 events will rise from 13 in 2024 to 16 next year, with the Dallas Open, Qatar Open and BMW Open in Munich all upgraded.

These additional ATP 500 events will increase the potential to gain ranking points and prize money for players outside of the ATP 1000 and Grand Slam tournaments, but this is very much a sticking plaster for what appears to be coming in tennis.

“Next season will see yet more enhancements to the ATP Tour’s premium product across a streamlined calendar,” said ATP Chairman, Andrea Gaudenzi.

“This is central to everything we’ve been building under OneVision, which ultimately aims to create the best possible experience for our fans. Last season we broke new ground, welcoming a record five million fans on site across our events.

“This is just one indication of how positively the sport is trending, and we believe there’s incredible potential to still be unlocked.”

Gaudenzi made this announcement while also being involved in talks with Saudi Arabian sporting chiefs that could send shockwaves through tennis if a deal is finalised to bring the ATP and WTA Tours together.

There are suggestions that the Saudi offer is worth $1billion and would an additional Masters 1000 event added to the calendar in Riyhad.

Elite players would focus on playing these events, which will all be men’s and women’s joint tournaments and would feature equal prize money for all players.

Meanwhile, the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open tournament chiefs have acted to protect status in the sport and have drawn up an alternative proposal that would also change the tennis eco-system that has been in place for decades.

They are proposing a Premier Tour that would consist of just 14 core events, including the four Grand Slams and a team event that could replace the traditional Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cups.

This plan could mean lower-ranking tournaments would be either demoted to meaningless events featuring no star names or cancelled altogether as it would be almost impossible to attract top tier sponsors.

Lew Sherr, the USTA’s chief executive officer and executive director, is emerging as a key figure in the Premier Tour plan and he offered these comments to Sports Illustrated.

“We think 10 is the appropriate number of Premier Tour events,” said Sherr.

“I can’t overstate the importance of all combined, all equal prize day one for the sport operating entity combined.

“And truly creating a gender-neutral sport is absolutely paramount for us and a critical sort of piece of this thing. We also think there is an opportunity for an international team event that would fit within this calendar; and then a year-end combined event.

“The other piece: we’re prescribing specific play-down weeks. So we know that competition matters. And if you’re a lower-ranked player, you may not be getting enough match play.

“If you lose early in a model like this, there may not be enough matches for you to be at your peak performance, so we’ve identified a series of weeks over the course of the year where you could drop down to get more match play, drop into what we think would be sort of the highest level of contender tour events.

“This is a massive reimagination of the way the sport is presented and change is hard.

“And we want to get it right and we’re taking our time and we’re working with stakeholders to make sure that we’re thinking through all of these questions that you’re asking and others are asking because that stuff is important. Ultimately it’s going to require change from within and that’s really hard, right?”

If adopted, Sherr suggested his plan could come into play for the start of the 2026 season, but there is always a danger that the Saudi bidders keen to be involved in tennis will start their own tour and sign up the game’s biggest stars to play for them if they are not welcomed into the tennis family.

As they have proved in golf, Saudi money can buy a lot of influence with big-name players who have left the PGA Tour in America and signed for the LIV Golf League.

That has splot golf in a manner that has damaged the sport and the nightmare scenario for tennis would be a similar divide emerging in our sport.

That needs to be avoided at all costs.