Some excerpts from The Athletic

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Their goal, according to five people who have been both involved with and briefed on those discussions, is to form a partnership with at least the 10 largest tournaments and their own events — Wimbledon, the U.S. Open, the French Open and the Australian Open — to create a premium tour that resembles a tennis version of Formula 1. 

In a sign of how serious the slams are about forcing change, they have yet to sign the next three-year agreement with the tours that codifies the system of awarding rankings points. That move signals their view that a significant transformation is in the offing, so signing a multi-year agreement based on the current schedule is pointless, even if that means beginning the 2024 season without an agreement. 

Executives involved with the discussions have described them as fluid and largely positive. All said there was a significant possibility that they could fall apart, or the premium tour could be expanded to include more than just the Grand Slams, the top-level events, and a few others deemed worthy. In recent years, tennis executives have worked with top consulting and investment firms that came up with similar proposals to the one now under consideration, only to fail to move tennis beyond its status quo.

“We want to grow our premium product and that’s a fact that we’ve been very vocal about,” Gaudenzi said during a meeting with a small group of journalists in Turin two weeks ago. “For the sport, closing the gap between the Masters and the slams is good for everybody. Now, there is a very big gap.”

While Gaudenzi and the slams may share a vision of what is best for tennis, it’s not clear what role he, his WTA Tour counterpart Simon, or the tours themselves would have moving forward. They may be left to oversee a collection of the small and mid-sized tournaments, known as the 500s and 250s. Under one scenario, developing players could largely make up the fields of those events, while players ranked in the top 100, who could earn a “tour card” good for the season and a specified guaranteed salary, focus on the top-level tour but are still able to participate in smaller events if they choose to.

Players who have begun to learn details of the plan the slams are trying to formulate have so far generally been supportive of the concept, especially those involved with the Professional Tennis Players Association, the player organization Novak Djokovic helped launch three years ago.

If the top 100 players had to focus mainly on the slams and roughly a dozen top-level tournaments, that would account for about 32 weeks of competition and leave ample time for them to play a few smaller events, where they could receive lucrative appearance fees, while also maintaining enough time for rest and a proper off-season.

Sports executives say revenues would likely rise if the slams and the top tournaments could sell their television and sponsorship rights more collectively, rather than driving down the market by competing against one another, though the structure of the partnership has not been finalized. It may not include all of the commercial rights for all the tournaments, the officials said. 

The changes would likely take at least a year or two to begin and longer than that to go into full effect as executives work to unwind or renegotiate long-term media and sponsorship deals and to figure out how to divide revenues between the top-level tours and the other tournaments.

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