The Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA), co-founded by Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic, filed an antitrust lawsuit in New York today against the women's and men's tennis organizations (ATP and WTA), the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and the Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), calling these organizations a "cartel".
The PTPA stated that the organizations that govern tennis have "complete control over the salaries and working conditions of players" and that they "violate state and federal laws" and that their monopoly "denies professional tennis players and other participants the right to fair competition."
The PTPA is demanding higher earnings for players, arguing that the governing bodies that control the biggest tournaments, including Wimbledon, Roland Garros, the US Open and the Australian Open, "restrict revenue distribution."
PTPA was founded by Djokovic and Vasek Pospisil in August 2020.
One of the goals of the PTPA is to become some kind of full-fledged union that would negotiate collective agreements like those that exist in team sports.
"Over the past few years, the PTPA has made countless efforts to collaborate with leading tennis organizations in the hope of achieving positive change for players. Despite all efforts, we have encountered resistance and a lack of meaningful action. For too long, players have been forced to accept a broken system that ignores the prosperity of players," Pospisil wrote on social media.
The PTPA said it met with more than 250 tennis players, as well as most of the top 20 players on the ATP and WTA rankings, before they went to court.
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