Raising a ruckus

Proposed union shouldn't greatly affect on-court product

Wayne Ferreira made news on Friday when he suggested that some disgruntled ATP Tour players are considering forming a new players' union. SI.com asked Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Wertheim whether this breakaway body might happen.

SI.com: Why is such talk arising now?

Jon Wertheim: It will take too much time and put everyone to sleep to rehash the business model of men’s tennis and all its various special-interest groups. As someone recently said to me, the structure of professional tennis is so incestuous that Jerry Springer should be the commissioner. The ATP originally was set up as a de facto players’ union, but it sprouted a marketing arm as well. (It was the ATP, for instance, that initiated and brokered the deal with ISL -- an unqualified fiasco, it turned out -- to package the Masters Series events together.)

Last fall and then again at the Australian Open, a group of dissident players led by Wayne Ferreira discussed forming an organization that will better represent the interests of the players than they feel the ATP does. For whatever reason, the story didn't come to light until the end of last week.

Just to get our terms straight, the "breakaway" group, as it's been called, isn’t really seeking to form a union in the classic labor-law sense. It would essentially be a professional trade organization open to players only. I spoke with Ferreira Friday and he stated emphatically that this group -- it's being called the IMTA, the International Men’s Tennis Association -- can exist within the framework of the ATP. So even if this movement succeeds, it may not result in a seismic change.

Got all that?

SI.com: What do the dissatisfied players want?

Wertheim: As with most labor-management disputes, "more money" is the quick and easy answer. But beyond that, they’re asking for more representation, a more audible voice, and "more transparency," as Ferreira put it, about financial matters. Ferreria claims, for instance, that the players are not satisfactorily informed about things such as ATP executives’ salaries.

SI.com: How many players are behind this?

Wertheim: Not surprisingly, the answers vary. Todd Woodbridge, whose loyalties are with the ATP, was quoted as saying that 90 percent of the players oppose it. Ferreira dismissed this figure and said that when he brought up the possibility of the IMTA in Australia, the support was overwhelming.

The more important question is which players are behind it. If it’s older players such as Ferreira, Jeff Tarango and other journeymen who, frankly, don’t have much economic leverage, the IMTA won’t get much traction. If, on the other hand, some of the younger, more marketable players support it, then things could get interesting. Roger Federer is someone who is said to be strongly in support. I haven’t heard anything publically yet, but given his acrimonious, adversarial relationship with the tour, Lleyton Hewitt is another prominent name who, it would stand to reason, might join forces with the runaways.

SI.com: Does the IMTA have any chance to succeed?

Wertheim: Any chance? Yes. But really, who knows? What does "succeed" mean in practice? The ATP is not without its flaws, both structurally and financially. But I’m not sure the IMTA is a better alternative. Plus, it’s always easy to find players -- or workers in any field, for that matter -- who are dissatisfied with their professional conditions or feel like they should be getting a bigger slice of the pie. Fair enough. But there’s a big difference between that and taking the next step. Who’s going to sit across the table from the ITF heads and demand that the players receive a bigger chunk of Grand Slam revenue? Who is going to deal with drug-testing agencies or help get Andy Roddick into People magazine? These are major undertakings that, right now, the ATP handles for its players.

SI.com: Is there any history here?

Wertheim: Well, remember, it was a similar peasants' revolt in 1989 that led to the ATP being formed in the first place. The ATP comes under siege, both from within and without, from time to time. Last year, for instance, the Indianapolis and Washington, D.C., tournament organizers filed a lawsuit against the ATP, basically on antitrust grounds. This suit supposedly was going to reveal a pattern of lavish spending and financial mismanagement worthy of Caligula (or of the USTA, anyway), and sound the death knell for the tour. Both sides rattled their sabers, everyone spent a lot of money on lawyers’ fees, and then the whole thing quietly disappeared.

Ironically, if you had asked me a month ago, I would have said that the women’s tour was equally, if not more, ripe for a players’ association separate and detached from the promoters. In many ways, the WTA is similarly situated in that weird no-man’s land, to use a tennis term, where management groups, players and promoters, whose interests are not merely different but often diametrically opposed, are under the same umbrella. In the NBA, for instance, you have labor and you have management, and the two sit on opposite sides of the table and every so often hash out a collective bargaining agreement. It’s basically Industrial Relations 101. In tennis, everyone is on the same side of the table, which causes business, suffice to say, to be fraught with problems and conflicts of interests.

I should add that I asked Lindsay Davenport on Friday whether there was any talk among the women of forming something like the IMTA. While she was quick to admit that the hodgepodge of constituents that comprise the WTA Tour is problematic, she says she’s not aware of a similar movement.

SI.com: So what do you think will happen?

Wertheim: First, I think this is a good thing inasmuch as it has made people aware of some of the structural problems that really hamper tennis. By the same token, I wonder how many of the IMTA’s grievances are really the fault of the ATP and how many are simply economic realities -- i.e., most people are struggling today relative to a few years ago.

The communications issues are also tricky. At its best, tennis is a sort of global village. At its worst, it is the tower of Babel. That’s what happens when you have players from all over the world who speak different languages and live in different time zones.

Again, a lot depends on whether the group can achieve critical mass. There will be a big meeting at Key Biscayne when players likely will be asked to sign on. We’ll obviously have a better sense of things after that.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Jon Werthein covers tennis for the magazine and is a regular contributor to SI.com. Click here to send a question to his Tennis Mailbag.

 

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