Tennis Antitrust Lawsuit: PTPA Claims, Settlement, Djokovic Exit

The tennis antitrust lawsuit was filed on March 18, 2025, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where twelve professional players and the Professional Tennis Players Association accuse the ATP Tour, the WTA Tour, and the four Grand Slam organizers of operating as a cartel that suppresses prize money and blocks competing events. The case, Pospisil v. ATP Tour, Inc., is pending before Judge Margaret Garnett, with motions to dismiss awaiting a ruling as of mid-2026.¹

Who Sued Whom

The case is docketed as No. 1:25-cv-02207.¹ The twelve named player 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. The PTPA is also a named plaintiff.²

The original defendants were the ATP Tour, the WTA Tour, the International Tennis Federation, and the International Tennis Integrity Agency. In September 2025, the PTPA filed an amended complaint adding the four Grand Slam operators — the USTA, Tennis Australia, the All England Lawn Tennis Club, and the French Tennis Federation — and dropped the ITF and ITIA from the case.³ Parallel complaints were filed the same day in the United Kingdom with the Competition and Markets Authority and in the European Union with the European Commission.⁴

The plaintiffs have demanded a jury trial and allege violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, seeking relief under the Clayton Act.²

What the Players Allege

The complaint’s central theory is that the tours and the Grand Slams have combined to acquire monopsony power over the market for professional tennis players’ labor. The specific conduct falls into a handful of buckets.

Prize money. The players say the tours and Slams coordinate to suppress prize money instead of letting individual tournaments compete on compensation. The complaint points to a 2013 episode in which the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells proposed a prize money increase that the tour rejected.⁵

Name, image, and likeness. Players allege they are forced to surrender NIL rights without adequate compensation and face limits on sponsorship and endorsement deals.²

Ranking points and the calendar. The ranking system, combined with a roughly 45-week schedule, operates as a lock-in: a player who competes in a non-sanctioned event risks career-ending damage to their ranking, so rival tournaments cannot get off the ground.⁵

Tournament non-competes. The complaint alleges tournament operators sign non-compete agreements and are assigned specific weeks and regions, so events do not compete with one another.²

Mandatory arbitration. The suit challenges the tours’ requirement that players resolve disputes through binding arbitration rather than courts, calling those provisions “illegal and non-negotiable.”⁵

The Revenue Fight Behind the Lawsuit

The dispute is grounded in a simple number: players’ share of Grand Slam revenue consistently sits below 16 percent. At Wimbledon in 2025, players received roughly 12.6 percent of the tournament’s £423.6 million in revenue. The French Open that year paid about 14.4 percent of an estimated €390.5 million. The U.S. Open paid about 13.4 percent of its $559.7 million in operating revenue in 2024.⁶

Players are pushing for 22 percent, which they say would bring Slam payouts in line with what ATP and WTA Combined 1000 events distribute. The gap represents hundreds of millions of dollars across the four majors. Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka, and Coco Gauff are among the top active players who have publicly expressed frustration with the distribution and with issues including health benefits, pensions, and player representation in Grand Slam governance.⁷

How the Tours and Slams Are Fighting Back

In May 2025, the ATP, WTA, ITF, and ITIA jointly moved to dismiss. Their arguments hit the case on several fronts.⁸

On standing, the defendants argue the PTPA is not a formal union, has no dues-paying members, and lacks both associational and antitrust standing. They called its inclusion “an improper attempt to circumvent class-action requirements.” On arbitration, the tours point to rulebook provisions that direct disputes to Delaware courts for ATP players, the American Arbitration Association for WTA players, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport for ITF matters, and the WTA filed a separate motion to compel its female plaintiffs into arbitration.⁹ The WTA also argued that male plaintiffs have no basis to sue the women’s tour and vice versa. On the merits, the defendants say rising prize money — Wimbledon’s 2025 pool exceeded $72 million, nearly double a decade earlier — shows no monopolistic injury.¹⁰

After the plaintiffs amended their complaint in June 2025, the court denied the original motions without prejudice and permitted refiling. The WTA submitted a renewed motion to compel arbitration on July 31, 2025, supported by its rulebook and player forms signed by Nicole Melichar-Martinez, Sorana Cîrstea, and Varvara Gracheva, among others. The plaintiffs opposed it in August 2025.¹¹ The Grand Slam organizers added in September 2025 also moved to dismiss. The USTA said it was “disappointed” by the decision to add them; the AELTC said it remained open to constructive discussions; and the French Tennis Federation expressed regret that the matter had reached court.³

Tennis Australia’s Settlement

The first crack in the defense came in December 2025, when Tennis Australia settled with the PTPA. The agreement was filed with the court in January 2026.¹² Tennis Australia pays no damages but is required to cover $50,000 in class-notification costs, and in exchange for its release it agreed to cooperate with the plaintiffs against the remaining defendants.¹³

The cooperation is broad. Tennis Australia agreed to turn over financial books and records, prize money data, information on player NIL rights and usage, sponsorship and endorsement data, scheduling requirements, ranking points information, and related communications, and to consult on structural reforms.¹² Cooperation regarding the ATP and WTA begins after the Australian Open; cooperation regarding the other three Slams begins after a ruling on their motions to dismiss. The PTPA called the deal an “ice-breaker” meant to encourage the others to negotiate, and the proposed class is open to any player who competed in a Grand Slam, ATP, or WTA event since March 18, 2021.¹³

Djokovic’s Exit From the PTPA

Novak Djokovic co-founded the PTPA with Vasek Pospisil, but he is not a plaintiff in the lawsuit and announced in January 2026 that he was stepping away from the association entirely. He cited concerns about transparency, governance, and how his name and image had been used, saying people thought of the PTPA as his personal organization “and that was wrong from the very beginning.”¹⁴¹⁵ He also disagreed with the direction of the litigation. The PTPA pushed back, suggesting Djokovic had helped spread inaccurate narratives about its governance.

The Credentials Fight at Roland-Garros and Wimbledon

In April 2026, PTPA director of player relations Anastasia Skavronskaia sought credentials for herself and two other officials at the French Open. The French Tennis Federation’s public relations director responded that they had received “clear guidance” not to credential anyone suing the FFT, and the AELTC gave a similar answer for Wimbledon.¹⁶

The PTPA filed an emergency motion asking Judge Garnett to compel the tournaments to issue credentials, framing the denials as retaliation against plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit. On May 22, 2026, Garnett denied the motion, finding no irreparable harm, but warned that the court “may consider their undisputedly retaliatory conduct in assessing any similar motions in the future.” Former PTPA executive director Ahmad Nassar said the judge described the exclusion as “petty.”¹⁷

What Has to Happen for the Players to Win

The plaintiffs face real hurdles. Harvard Law School lecturer Peter Carfagna has noted that because tennis players are independent contractors who signed agreements funneling disputes into arbitration or specified courts, the PTPA has to prove those provisions are unconscionable, a high bar. The PTPA’s status as an association rather than a certified union also complicates class representation, and some top players, including Carlos Alcaraz, have not publicly backed the effort.¹⁰

The merits will turn on the “rule of reason,” which weighs anticompetitive effects against procompetitive benefits. The defendants will argue that ranking points and mandatory scheduling get top players to major events, which protects sponsor interest and sustains the prize money players do receive. Carfagna considers that a credible defense and has predicted a negotiated settlement, involving increased player representation in governance or a higher revenue share, is more likely than a court-ordered overhaul.¹⁰

The 2021 NCAA v. Alston decision helps the players. There, the Supreme Court unanimously held that NCAA compensation restrictions were subject to antitrust scrutiny, confirming that sports organizations get no blanket exemption and that the rule of reason applies to restrictions on athlete pay. Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence put it bluntly: “The NCAA is not above the law.”¹⁸ Whether that reasoning extends to independent-contractor professionals who voluntarily entered the tours’ ecosystem is unsettled.

Where the Case Stands Now

As of mid-2026, the defendants’ motions to dismiss and the WTA’s motion to compel arbitration are still pending before Judge Garnett, who has said she expects to rule soon.¹⁷ Discovery is stayed as to the WTA pending the arbitration ruling.¹¹ The PTPA says its legal effort is “backed by comprehensive funding sufficient to last through trial.”¹² The next ruling will decide whether the case moves into full discovery, is narrowed, or is dismissed at the threshold.

1
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