Hillburgh Tennis Lawsuit: PTPA Allegations, Rulings, Settlement

The PTPA tennis lawsuit is a sweeping antitrust case filed in March 2025 by the Professional Tennis Players Association and twelve player-plaintiffs against the sport’s governing bodies, alleging they operate as a cartel that suppresses pay, blocks competition, and mistreats athletes. The action was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, with parallel complaints in the United Kingdom and the European Union. As of mid-2026, motions to dismiss remain pending before Judge Margaret Garnett, one defendant (Tennis Australia) has already settled, and the litigation is active.

Who Brought the Case

The PTPA was co-founded in 2019 by Novak Djokovic and Vasek Pospisil as an independent player advocacy organization separate from the ATP and WTA player councils. It is structured as an association rather than a union, so it lacks formal collective bargaining power but can pursue antitrust claims on behalf of professional players.

On March 18, 2025, the PTPA and twelve named player-plaintiffs filed a class-action complaint on behalf of what the organization describes as the top 250 men’s and women’s singles players and the top 100 doubles players on each side. The named plaintiffs are Vasek Pospisil, Nick Kyrgios, Anastasia Rodionova, Nicole Melichar-Martinez, Saisai Zheng, Sorana Cîrstea, John-Patrick Smith, Noah Rubin, Aldila Sutjiadi, Varvara Gracheva, Tennys Sandgren, and Reilly Opelka.¹

Djokovic, despite co-founding the PTPA and sitting on its executive committee, is not among the named plaintiffs. PTPA executive director Ahmad Nassar said the decision was made “collectively” to shift focus away from “the biggest name” toward the broader player population.² Carlos Alcaraz publicly distanced himself shortly after the filing, saying he had not been told in advance and did not support it.³ Many players have stayed quiet in part because ATP and WTA rulebooks require members to submit disputes to arbitration, making public support for outside litigation a potential rulebook violation.⁴

What the Lawsuit Alleges

The original complaint targeted the ATP Tour, the WTA Tour, the International Tennis Federation, and the International Tennis Integrity Agency. In September 2025, an amended complaint added the four Grand Slam organizers — Tennis Australia, the All England Lawn Tennis Club, the French Tennis Federation, and the United States Tennis Association — after settlement negotiations failed to produce an agreement by an October 2025 deadline.⁵

Suppressed Player Earnings

At the heart of the case is an economic grievance. The PTPA contends that players take home roughly 17 to 17.5 percent of the sport’s annual revenue, compared to roughly 47 percent for NFL players, 50 percent for NBA players, and 61 percent for Premier League footballers.⁶ At the Grand Slam level, prize money as a percentage of tournament revenue has stayed below 15 percent at all four majors in recent years despite rising total prize pools.⁷

The complaint alleges the governing bodies collude to cap prize money. As an example, the PTPA cites a 2012 incident in which the owner of the BNP Paribas Open proposed a $1.6 million prize money increase that was rejected by the ATP and WTA.⁸ The suit also alleges players are forced to sign over their name, image, and likeness rights to tournament organizers without separate compensation, while facing limits on independent sponsorships.⁹

A Closed Tournament System

The PTPA argues that the ATP and WTA maintain non-compete rules governing geographic proximity and scheduling, which blocks new events from entering the market and prevents existing lower-tier tournaments from offering higher prize money to attract players.⁸ The ranking points system is central to this claim. Because players can only earn ranking points at sanctioned events, the complaint characterizes the system as a coercive mechanism that effectively prohibits participation in independent competitions.⁹

Player Welfare

The complaint describes an 11-month competitive calendar as “unsustainable,” alleging players are forced into roughly 45 weeks of competition per year to maintain their rankings. Specific health and safety allegations include forcing athletes to play in extreme heat, scheduling matches as late as 3 a.m., and requiring players to use different types of balls on different surfaces, which the PTPA claims causes chronic wrist, elbow, and shoulder injuries.² Because players are classified as independent contractors, they bear their own travel, coaching, and medical costs with no employer-provided benefits.¹⁰

Integrity Agency Practices

The ITIA, which manages anti-doping and anti-corruption enforcement, comes in for particular criticism. The PTPA alleges that the agency conducts invasive searches of personal devices without consent, interrogates players without legal representation, and has suspended athletes based on what the complaint calls “flimsy or fabricated evidence.”⁹ Under current rules, ITIA investigators can demand access to a player’s phone if corruption is suspected, and players must be available for drug testing during a daily window from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., every day of the year.²

Why Tennis Governance Sits at the Center

Unlike the NFL or NBA, where a single league governs the sport and collectively bargains with a players’ union, tennis has no unified authority. The ATP manages the men’s professional circuit, the WTA manages the women’s circuit, and the ITF serves as the sport’s umbrella body with control over development, the Olympics, and integrity matters. The four Grand Slam tournaments operate with significant autonomy from all three.¹¹

Players have seats at the table. The ATP board includes four player representatives alongside four tournament representatives, and the WTA board includes three of each. The PTPA argues this representation is inadequate because the player representatives on the ATP board are elected by an advisory council with only an advisory role, leaving players bound by rules they had limited input in creating while the governing bodies both regulate and commercially profit from the sport.¹¹

How the Defendants Have Responded

The governing bodies have pushed back forcefully. The ATP called the lawsuit “baseless and misguided” and accused the PTPA of sowing “division and distraction.”¹² The WTA labeled it “regrettable and misguided.”³

In May 2025, the defendants filed motions to dismiss on several grounds:

Mandatory arbitration. The ATP, WTA, and ITF argued that player membership agreements require disputes to be resolved through arbitration or in specific forums (Delaware courts for the ATP, the American Arbitration Association for the WTA, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport for the ITF) rather than in federal court.
Lack of standing. The defendants argued the PTPA should be removed as a plaintiff because it has no formal membership roll, charges no dues, and is not a recognized union.
No conspiracy evidence. The ITIA argued the complaint “failed to plausibly allege” a conspiracy with the other governing bodies. The ATP and WTA called the conspiracy claims “conclusory.”
Rising prize money. The defendants pointed to continued increases as evidence that players have not suffered financial harm.
Cross-tour standing. The ATP and WTA each argued that players from the opposite tour had no standing to sue them.

These motions remain pending before Judge Garnett.¹³ In a May 2026 ruling on an unrelated emergency motion, she indicated she expects to rule on the dismissal motions “soon.”¹⁴

Rulings So Far

The Anti-Retaliation Order

Before the dismissal motions were filed, the case produced its first significant ruling. In early May 2025, the PTPA asked Judge Garnett for an order preventing the defendants from intimidating players into staying out of the lawsuit. The request was prompted by an ATP letter circulated to players asking them to confirm they did not support the PTPA or the case, and by an ATP board member pressuring Alexander Zverev and Ben Shelton to sign it. Judge Garnett called the conduct “coercive, deceptive, or potentially abusive” and on May 7, 2025, ordered the ATP to stop retaliating or threatening to retaliate against any player for considering or joining the case.¹⁵

The ATP was required to distribute a letter to players within seven days clarifying they could not be punished for participating and to retain all future communications with players regarding the case. The order applied only to the ATP; Judge Garnett declined to extend it to the other defendants, finding the broader request “overbroad.”¹⁶

The Credentials Fight

In May 2026, the French Tennis Federation and the All England Club rejected the PTPA’s applications for credentials to attend the French Open and Wimbledon. The PTPA filed an emergency motion alleging retaliation. The tournament organizers argued that a New York court had no jurisdiction over events held abroad, that credentials are “a privilege, not an entitlement,” and that the PTPA had waited too long to apply.¹⁷

Judge Garnett denied the emergency motion on May 22, 2026, finding no showing of “irreparable harm.” She added a pointed warning that the court might consider the defendants’ “undisputedly retaliatory conduct” if similar motions come up in the future.¹⁴

The Tennis Australia Settlement

In December 2025, Tennis Australia became the first defendant to break ranks. The organization settled “without admitting any liability or wrongdoing,” and the financial terms have not been publicly disclosed.¹⁸

The strategic significance may matter more than the dollars. According to a filing reviewed by The Guardian, Tennis Australia agreed to cooperate with the PTPA against the remaining defendants by providing “valuable discovery,” including financial records, tournament prize money data, player name-image-and-likeness information, sponsorship details, tour scheduling requirements, and internal communications.¹² The PTPA’s filing stated this information would help litigate claims against the other defendants “well in advance of court-ordered discovery.” In January 2026, the court granted a stay of the injunctive relief claims against Tennis Australia while the settlement is finalized.¹⁹

Legal Hurdles and Relevant Precedent

The case raises familiar sports antitrust questions in an unfamiliar context. Under the Sherman Act’s “rule of reason” test, courts weigh a practice’s anti-competitive effects against its pro-competitive benefits. Peter Carfagna, a lecturer at Harvard Law School, has suggested the lawsuit is unlikely to produce “seismic shifts,” in part because the ranking points system and tournament structure have a “procompetitive basis” by ensuring the best players appear at major events. He has predicted a settlement involving modest reforms rather than a courtroom victory.²⁰

The arbitration clauses in player agreements pose the most immediate threat. Proving those clauses unenforceable or “unconscionable” is, as Carfagna noted, “very hard to do.” If the court sends the case to arbitration, the PTPA’s leverage diminishes considerably.²⁰

Broader precedent offers the PTPA some support. The Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in NCAA v. Alston found that NCAA rules limiting education-related benefits for student-athletes violated antitrust law. In Le et al. v. Zuffa, a class of over 1,000 UFC fighters was certified in 2023 on claims that the organization maintained monopsony power by suppressing fighter earnings.²¹

The European proceedings may offer a more receptive environment. In December 2023, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued two rulings striking down restrictive rules maintained by the International Skating Union and by FIFA and UEFA. The court held that sports governing bodies acting as both regulators and commercial operators must ensure any rules restricting competition are transparent, objective, non-discriminatory, proportionate, and subject to independent review. Rules that fail those criteria qualify as restrictions of competition under EU law.²² Legal commentators have noted that these rulings could make the PTPA’s claims stronger in Europe than in U.S. courts, where courts have historically been more deferential to sports organizations.²³

What the PTPA Is Seeking

The remedies vary by jurisdiction. In the U.S. case, the PTPA is seeking both monetary damages and injunctive relief to stop what it calls the governing bodies’ monopolistic behavior.²⁰ In the UK complaint filed with the Competition and Markets Authority, the PTPA is asking for a formal declaration that the governing bodies have violated the Competition Act 1998, along with orders requiring them to end the alleged infringements and refrain from similar conduct in the future.²⁴

The PTPA’s broader reform agenda includes increasing Grand Slam prize money from about 16 percent of tournament revenue to 22 percent by 2030 and creating a “Grand Slam Player Council” for strategic decision-making.⁶ The PTPA has stated its case is backed by funding sufficient to last through trial and that it aims for a “successful jury verdict.”¹²

Where the Case Stands

The case, formally styled Pospisil v. ATP Tour, Inc., Case No. 1:25-cv-02207, sits before Judge Margaret Garnett in the Southern District of New York.²⁵ The remaining defendants include the ATP, the WTA, the ITF, the All England Club, the French Tennis Federation, and the USTA. Reporting indicates the ITIA was removed from the amended complaint when the Grand Slams were added, though the ITF remains a defendant.²⁶ The motions to dismiss and compel arbitration remain pending, with Judge Garnett signaling a ruling in the near term. Parallel proceedings continue in the UK and EU, making this a coordinated challenge across three jurisdictions to the way professional tennis has been run for decades.

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