PTPA Antitrust Tennis Lawsuit: Retaliation Ruling and Settlement

The PTPA antitrust lawsuit is a federal case filed in March 2025 by the Professional Tennis Players Association and a group of current and former players accusing the ATP, WTA, ITF, and ITIA — later joined by the four Grand Slam tournaments — of running professional tennis as a cartel that suppresses player pay, controls the calendar, and locks out competing events. The case is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York as Pospisil et al. v. ATP Tour, Inc., et al., No. 1:25-cv-02207, alongside parallel complaints filed the same day in the United Kingdom and the European Union.¹ As of mid-2026, motions to dismiss are undecided, Tennis Australia has settled and agreed to cooperate with the plaintiffs, and no trial date has been set.

Who Is Suing Whom

The U.S. complaint was filed on March 18, 2025, by the PTPA and twelve player-plaintiffs drawn from both tours: Vasek Pospisil, Nick Kyrgios, Reilly Opelka, Sorana Cîrstea, Zheng Saisai, Nicole Melichar-Martinez, Varvara Gracheva, Anastasia Rodionova, John-Patrick Smith, Aldila Sutjiadi, Noah Rubin, and Tennys Sandgren.² The group includes active singles players, doubles specialists, and retirees. PTPA co-founder Novak Djokovic did not add his name; reporting indicated he “agonized” over the decision but preferred to keep the focus off himself.³

The original defendants were the ATP Tour, the WTA Tour, the International Tennis Federation, and the International Tennis Integrity Agency. The four Grand Slam tournaments were named in the complaint as co-conspirators but not as defendants. After a 90-day settlement window produced no agreement, the PTPA moved to add them, and on September 25, 2025 Judge Margaret Garnett approved the motion, bringing Tennis Australia, the All England Lawn Tennis Club, the French Tennis Federation, and the United States Tennis Association into the case.⁴

On the same day as the U.S. filing, the PTPA lodged a complaint with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority under the Competition Act 1998 and a formal antitrust complaint with the European Commission under Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.⁵⁶ Ten additional players are named across the UK and EU proceedings, bringing the total across all three jurisdictions to 22.⁷

What the Lawsuit Alleges

The complaint runs more than 160 pages and invokes both the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act. Its central theory is that the ATP, WTA, ITF, and ITIA operate as a “monopsony” cartel that artificially suppresses what players earn while enriching tournaments and governing bodies.¹ The specific practices challenged include:

Prize-money fixing, in which the tours allegedly cap what individual tournaments can pay and reject requests from operators seeking to pay more.⁸
Revenue suppression: players receive roughly 17.5% of the sport’s estimated $2.2 billion in annual revenue, according to the PTPA, compared to about 50% in the NFL and NBA. At the Grand Slams, prize money represents roughly 15 to 20% of each tournament’s revenue.⁹¹⁰
An 11-month mandatory calendar backed by ranking points that locks players into tour events and, the PTPA argues, prevents rival competitions from entering the market.⁸
Compelled transfer of name, image, and likeness rights to tournaments without compensation, alongside restrictions on how many sponsors a player may carry.⁷
ITIA investigative overreach, including invasive device searches, middle-of-the-night drug tests, and interrogations without legal representation.⁸

The amended complaint added claims that the Grand Slams’ exclusive reliance on ATP and WTA rankings for tournament entry functions as a “group boycott” against rival tours, and that the Slams enforce an agreement preventing individual events from paying more than they do.¹¹

The PTPA seeks monetary damages, disgorgement of profits, and injunctive relief that would force rule changes across the sport.¹² It has also filed for class-action certification on behalf of any player who competed in a Grand Slam, ATP, or WTA event since March 18, 2021.¹¹

The Retaliation Ruling

The first substantive order came on May 7, 2025, when Judge Garnett found that professional tennis players are “vulnerable to economic coercion” because they cannot earn a living in their field outside the ATP and Grand Slam system, and that ATP conduct pressuring players to disavow the suit had a “chilling” effect on participation.¹³ Court filings alleged that ATP board members had specifically pressured Alexander Zverev and Ben Shelton and that the tour circulated a letter encouraging players to declare they did not support the PTPA.¹⁴ Judge Garnett ordered the ATP to stop retaliating or threatening retaliation against any player considering joining the case and to distribute a notice making that clear. She declined to impose a blanket ban on ATP communications about the litigation, calling it “unnecessary and counterproductive.”¹⁵

Motions to Dismiss

On May 20, 2025, the four original defendants filed a joint motion to dismiss along with individual motions raising overlapping arguments.¹⁶ Their main arguments:

The PTPA has no standing because it is not a union, collects no dues, and cannot demonstrate formal members.
Players signed agreements requiring arbitration rather than federal court, with the ATP pointing to Delaware courts, the WTA to the American Arbitration Association, and the ITF to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.¹⁷
Prize money has continued rising, so no competitive harm has occurred.
Male plaintiffs should not be able to sue the women’s tour, and vice versa.¹⁶

On July 2, 2025, Judge Garnett denied those motions without prejudice, meaning the defendants could refile after the plaintiffs amended their complaint.¹⁸ Renewed motions to dismiss and compel arbitration followed on July 31, 2025, with briefing completed that September. The three remaining Grand Slam defendants filed their own motions to dismiss in December 2025, arguing the plaintiffs relied on “conclusory assertions” rather than evidence of a real agreement among organizations that operate independently on different surfaces and continents.¹¹ Judge Garnett has not yet ruled on any of the pending motions. Whether the case advances into full discovery, is narrowed, or is dismissed depends on those rulings.

Tennis Australia Settles and Agrees to Cooperate

The defendants’ unified front broke in December 2025, when Tennis Australia reached a settlement with the PTPA and was dropped from the lawsuit without admitting liability or wrongdoing.¹⁹ Terms were made public on January 17, 2026, the opening day of the Australian Open.²⁰

Tennis Australia pays no damages, only $50,000 in class-notification costs.²¹ In exchange for a release, it agreed to hand over extensive discovery: financial records, tournament prize-money data, player NIL information, sponsorship details, internal communications, and documents on scheduling and ranking-point agreements. Cooperation regarding the ATP and WTA was set to begin after the Australian Open; cooperation regarding the other three Slams starts after any ruling on their motions to dismiss. The PTPA has called the settlement an “ice-breaker” and said it intends to use the material to pressure the remaining defendants toward negotiation.

Djokovic’s Exit and Public Divisions

On January 4, 2026, Djokovic announced on social media that he was stepping away from the PTPA. He cited “ongoing concerns regarding transparency, governance, and the way my voice and image have been represented,” and said his values were “no longer aligned with the current direction of the organization.”²² Because he was never a named plaintiff, reporting indicated his departure would not have a “material effect on the possibility of settlements or dismissals.”³

Some active stars have publicly distanced themselves. Carlos Alcaraz said he learned of the filing through social media and was surprised to find his own past comments about the schedule quoted on page 71 of the complaint without his knowledge. “There are things I agree with and there are other things I don’t agree with,” he said. “The main thing is I don’t support what was done.” The ATP called the PTPA’s approach “division and distraction”; the WTA called the suit “regrettable and misguided.”²³

In March 2026, PTPA executive director Ahmad Nassar stepped down, moving to an advisory role while remaining CEO of the PTPA’s for-profit affiliate Winners Alliance. He said he would stay involved in the litigation.²⁴

How Legal Observers Read the Odds

Peter Carfagna, a sports law lecturer at Harvard Law School, has offered a skeptical view of the lawsuit’s transformative potential. He pointed to the arbitration clauses players signed and the difficulty of proving those provisions unconscionable, and questioned whether the PTPA can represent a full class when prominent players openly disagree with it.²⁵ On the merits, Carfagna argued that under the “rule of reason” standard, many of the challenged practices have a “procompetitive basis”: mandatory tournament participation, for instance, keeps top players at events, which sustains sponsor interest and the prize money that funds the tour. He compared the case to the antitrust disputes in professional golf and predicted a similar outcome — a settlement with modest reforms rather than a fundamental restructuring.

The PTPA has cited recent European rulings involving the International Skating Union and the European Super League as evidence that courts are becoming more receptive to athletes challenging governing-body monopolies.²⁶ It has told the court its legal campaign is “backed by comprehensive funding sufficient to last through trial.”²⁰

The defendants still in the case are the ATP, WTA, ITF, ITIA, the All England Club, the French Tennis Federation, and the USTA. Tennis Australia’s cooperation, once documents begin flowing, could reshape the litigation over the next 12 to 18 months.¹¹

1
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2
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23
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