Tennis Antitrust Lawsuit: PTPA vs ATP, WTA, and ITF

In March 2025, the Professional Tennis Players Association and twelve professional players filed a tennis antitrust lawsuit against the sport’s governing bodies in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that the ATP Tour, WTA Tour, and the four Grand Slam organizers operate as a cartel that suppresses player earnings, locks athletes into a punishing global schedule, and exploits their name, image, and likeness rights. The case, Pospisil v. ATP Tour, Inc., was filed as a class action and remains pending as of early 2026, with one defendant already settled and dismissal motions from the rest awaiting rulings.¹

What the Players Are Alleging

The 163-page complaint invokes the Sherman Act and Clayton Act and describes professional tennis as an illegal monopsony, meaning a market where a coordinated group of buyers dominates the purchase of labor. The plaintiffs contend that arrangement lets the governing bodies hold down what players earn while extracting enormous commercial value from their talent.²

Prize Money and Revenue Share

The complaint alleges that while players in the NBA, NFL, and other major leagues typically receive around 50% of total revenue, tennis players receive only 10% to 20% of the roughly $1.5 billion generated by the Grand Slams in 2024. Across all tours and tournaments combined, prize money accounts for approximately 25% of total revenue, according to the filing.³⁴

The plaintiffs allege the defendants coordinate to cap prize money and use veto power to block increases. As a specific example, the complaint cites a 2012 episode in which Larry Ellison, the owner of the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, tried to raise his tournament’s prize pool by $1.6 million. The ATP allegedly rejected the proposal because it would have pressured other tournaments to raise payouts above agreed-upon levels.³

The Ranking System and Forced Scheduling

The complaint calls the ranking points system an “anticompetitive currency” that funnels players into sanctioned events and away from independent competitions. Because ranking points are awarded only for participation in tour events, and because those points determine entry into Grand Slams and other premier tournaments, players are effectively locked into a 45-week, six-continent schedule with little practical ability to play elsewhere.² Players who withdraw or compete in unsanctioned events face fines and suspensions, the complaint alleges, including penalties for absences caused by injury, the birth of a child, or a death in the family.³

Name, Image, and Likeness Rights

The suit alleges that players are required to sign over their name, image, and likeness rights as a condition of competing, often without compensation, and that the tours then monetize those rights through their own sponsorship deals. Players are also barred from entering sponsorship agreements in certain business categories that compete with the defendants’ commercial partners.²

Who Is Suing and Who Is Being Sued

The twelve individual plaintiffs span both tours. The men are Vasek Pospisil, Nicholas Kyrgios, Reilly Opelka, John-Patrick Smith, Noah Rubin, and Tennys Sandgren. The women are Sorana Cîrstea, Anastasia Rodionova, Nicole Melichar-Martinez, Saisai Zheng, Aldila Sutjiadi, and Varvara Gracheva. The PTPA itself is also a named plaintiff.¹

Novak Djokovic, who co-founded the PTPA with Pospisil in 2021, was not among the named plaintiffs. The organization was created as a Canadian not-for-profit to advocate for player interests independently of the ATP and WTA player councils, which the founders viewed as compromised by conflicts of interest.⁵

The list of defendants shifted significantly. The original filing named the ATP Tour, WTA Tour, International Tennis Federation, and International Tennis Integrity Agency. In September 2025, the plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint that dropped the ITF and ITIA and added the four Grand Slam organizers: Tennis Australia, the All England Lawn Tennis Club (Wimbledon), the French Tennis Federation, and the United States Tennis Association.⁶

The plaintiffs also filed parallel proceedings in the United Kingdom under the Competition Act 1998 and before the European Commission under Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.⁷

What the Plaintiffs Want

The lawsuit seeks monetary damages, including disgorgement of profits, injunctive relief compelling changes to tour rules, and class certification covering all professional players who competed on the tours from 2021 onward.³

Beyond the courtroom, the PTPA has said it would accept a negotiated settlement that includes formal recognition of the association, a collective bargaining framework, increased prize money and revenue sharing, removal of caps on tournament payouts, NIL compensation, and greater scheduling flexibility.⁸ The amended complaint also asks the court for a declaratory judgment reclassifying players as employees rather than independent contractors, which would open the door to formal unionization.⁹

How the Defendants Are Fighting Back

The defendants have rejected the allegations. The WTA called the lawsuit “both regrettable and misguided,” and the ATP accused the PTPA of choosing “division and distraction through misinformation over progress.”⁴

In May 2025, the original four defendants filed a battery of motions to dismiss. The WTA argued that its players had signed rulebook provisions requiring disputes to go to American Arbitration Association proceedings, and moved to compel arbitration. The ITF and ATP similarly argued that contractual provisions barred the lawsuit from proceeding in New York, with the ATP contending the case belonged in Delaware. All four jointly argued that the PTPA should be removed as a plaintiff for lack of formal dues-paying members and therefore lack of standing. The ATP also sought to dismiss the women’s players’ claims against it, and the WTA sought to dismiss the male players’ claims against it.¹⁰¹¹

Those initial motions were denied without prejudice in July 2025, allowing the defendants to refile after the amended complaint. New rounds followed. On December 22, 2025, the three remaining Grand Slam defendants — Wimbledon, the French Open, and the U.S. Open — filed a joint motion to dismiss, arguing that the cartel allegations rely on “conclusory assertions” rather than evidence, given that the tournaments operate independently at different times of the year and on different surfaces.¹²

Tennis Australia’s Settlement

Tennis Australia became the first defendant to break ranks. In December 2025, it reached an undisclosed settlement with the plaintiffs, and on January 22, 2026, the court granted a stay of injunctive relief claims against it. Tennis Australia settled without admitting liability or wrongdoing, avoiding potential damages that one analysis estimated could have reached eight figures.¹²

In exchange, Tennis Australia agreed to cooperate with the case against the remaining defendants by turning over financial records, prize money data, NIL rights usage, sponsorship and endorsement information, tour scheduling requirements, ranking points data, and internal communications. The PTPA said it intended to “litigate the antitrust claims to a successful jury verdict.”¹³

Djokovic’s Exit From the PTPA

In early January 2026, Djokovic publicly severed ties with the organization he co-founded. In a social media statement, he cited “deep-seated concerns” about “transparency, governance, and the way my voice and image have been represented,” and said his values were “no longer aligned with the organization’s current direction.”¹⁴

The split had been building. Djokovic had never joined the lawsuit as a named plaintiff and had reportedly expressed reservations about the “aggressive” legal strategy pursued under then-Executive Director Ahmad Nassar, describing some of the legal language as “quite strong.” Reports also indicated he viewed the Tennis Australia settlement as undermining the goal of total systemic reform.¹⁴ Legal analysts noted the departure did not materially affect the lawsuit, which is a class action that does not depend on any single plaintiff.⁴

The Legal Hurdles Ahead

Peter Carfagna, a lecturer at Harvard Law School, has said the arbitration clauses players signed when joining the tours could be a threshold problem. To stay in court rather than be pushed into arbitration, the plaintiffs must prove those contractual provisions are unconscionable, which Carfagna called “very hard to do.”¹⁵

Past that, the plaintiffs face the demanding “rule of reason” standard that governs most antitrust claims. A court must weigh the anticompetitive effects of the challenged practices against any procompetitive benefits. The defendants are expected to argue that the ranking system, mandatory scheduling, and integrity rules serve legitimate purposes: competitive balance, sponsor interest, and fair play. Carfagna has noted that the exponential growth in prize money over recent decades cuts against the claim that the tours are stifling the market.¹⁵

Players’ independent-contractor status also sets them apart from team-sport athletes, who bargain collectively through unions. Without employee status, the PTPA cannot function as a traditional union, which is why the amended complaint seeks the declaratory judgment on reclassification. Coordinating outcomes across the New York court, the UK proceeding, and the European Commission carries its own risk of contradictory rulings.⁹

Where the Case Stands Now

The renewed motions to dismiss and compel arbitration from the ATP and WTA were fully briefed by September 2025. Discovery between the ATP and the plaintiffs on class certification has begun, while discovery against the WTA remains stayed pending resolution of its motions. The joint motion to dismiss filed by the three remaining Grand Slams in December 2025 has not yet been ruled on.¹⁶¹² If the case survives, it moves into full discovery and class certification, stages that could take years. The pending rulings on arbitration and dismissal will likely determine whether the fight plays out in open court or gets redirected to closed-door arbitration proceedings that the plaintiffs have sought to avoid.

1
CourtListener. Pospisil v. ATP Tour, Inc.
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CMS Law. Foot Fault: Alleged Anti-Competitive Practices of Tennis’s Governing Bodies
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The Race to the Bottom. An Ace or a Whiff: Professional Tennis Players Association Adds the Grand Slams to Its Antitrust Lawsuit
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