Men’s and Women’s Pro Tennis Tour Commercial Merger Still Far From Finished

The ATP and WTA Tours will not strike an agreement to merge their business units before the end of December, as had been widely forecast by insiders earlier this year. Talks will continue in 2026, though sources within tennis now voice some skepticism whether a deal could get done any time soon.

“The WTA and ATP have agreed to continue our conversations in the new year regarding a potential joint commercial venture,” the two tours wrote in a statement to Front Office Sports. “There are no updates beyond that at this time.”

This is a far less rosy outlook than ATP chairman Andrea Gaudenzi had just two months ago. In October, Gaudenzi expressed optimism to Sports Business Journal about securing a non-binding “short-form” agreement by the season-ending ATP Finals.

“Once you sign the short-form, even though, technically, until you sign the long-form [agreement] it is never binding, then you have [2026] to go through the negotiation of the long-form, to the integration, selecting the board, selecting the CEO,” Gaudenzi told the publication.

And the outgoing US Open director and former WTA CEO claimed the deal was on “the doorstep of signing” just last month.

“Right now, it’s the closest ever to bringing together their commercial assets,” Stacey Allaster said at a sports business conference at Columbia University. “They are on the doorstep of signing and they will become one commercial entity.” 

This is not the first time expectations had run ahead of the difficult reality of forging a deal between the two tours.  Similarly in 2024 many in the tennis world thought a business merger was around the corner.

A business merger would combine the media operations of the two tours, sponsorship sales, gambling data deals, and create a single selling unit across the tours. The theory is that buyers would prefer to buy the whole sport rather than the separate tours.  

The key issue is how the revenues are divided given the financial disparities between the circuits. For 2024, the ATP reported $293 million of revenue and a surplus of $52 million, whereas the WTA had a shortfall of $4.9 million on revenues of $142.6 million, according to the tours’ recently filed tax returns. While the WTA is the top-paying sport for women professionally, it has long lagged its male counterpart in terms of revenue. That has led the ATP to seek an uneven split of revenues, with one source saying the discussions started with an 80-20 ratio. Critics of such a gap in revenue distribution note the most popular events in tennis are combined, and so merging sales should reflect that.

Another issue is structural. The WTA’s business unit is housed in WTA Ventures, 20 percent of which the tour sold in 2023 to CVC Capital partners for $150 million. Meanwhile, unlike the WTA putting all its commercial rights under one roof, the ATP spreads them around. Some ATP commercial rights are in one unit, broadcast rights to the Masters 1000s in a second, media rights to other events in a third, and data in another.

Two sources also said the WTA had taken a fresh look at the proposed short-form agreement under its new chair Valerie Camillo, who took the post in late October. A source close to the WTA denied any suggestion that Camillo was somehow responsible for a short form agreement not getting done.

“There were outstanding conversations for a deal this complex prior to Valerie joining and those discussions continue,” this source said. 

But said a different source of a possible merger, “I’d be surprised if it got done any time soon.”