Power struggle in tennis: the Grand Slams isolate the PTPA
The Professional Tennis Players Association has effectively been excluded from direct talks with the Grand Slams on the central issue of the moment, the revenue split and player welfare. Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open continue to refuse to sit at a formal table with the players' union as long as the antitrust lawsuit the PTPA filed in March 2025 remains open, and in recent weeks they have preferred to deal directly with an informal group of top players led by Sinner, Alcaraz, Sabalenka and Gauff, bypassing the organization founded in 2020 by Novak Djokovic and Vasek Pospisil.
This is not a simple technical matter. It is the first real stress test for the governance of modern tennis, and it arrives in the days leading up to Roland Garros, scheduled to start on May 24.
The antitrust lawsuit and why it changed everything
On March 18, 2025, the PTPA, together with twelve players including Pospisil and Nick Kyrgios, filed an antitrust lawsuit in the federal court of the Southern District of New York, accompanied by parallel actions reported in London and Brussels, before the European Commission. Initial targets: ATP, WTA, ITF and ITIA. The filing accuses the four bodies of having run the tour as a cartel, suppressing player earnings, blocking the entry of alternative tournaments, imposing a punitive calendar and handling anti-doping in an opaque way.
Over the course of 2025 the four Slams were added as co-conspirators and then as defendants. That is where the story branched. Wimbledon, Roland Garros and the US Open filed a joint motion to dismiss the case, also challenging American jurisdiction over the non-US entities. Tennis Australia took the opposite path: in December 2025 it reached a settlement with the PTPA, the terms of which were publicly filed in January 2026. In exchange for exiting the case, the organizer of the Australian Open agreed to cooperate with the PTPA, including the sharing of confidential financial information useful to the union against the other three Slams.
The Wimbledon, Roland Garros and US Open wall
From that moment on, the position of the three Slams still named as defendants hardened. The official line, repeated privately by the tournaments and picked up by several outlets, is that no substantive negotiations can be held with the PTPA while the lawsuit is pending, because any meaningful concession could be used in court. It is a legal reasoning that nonetheless produces a precise political effect: keeping the only structured organization that represents players out of the room.
The concrete signals have piled up. In the summer of 2025 the joint letter from the top 10 men and women to the four Slams, dated July 30, drew cautious replies but no substantive economic concessions. The real breaking point came at Indian Wells in March 2026: three Slams out of four, with Tennis Australia excluded, offered players the creation of a *player council*, a formula that gave tennis players a voice but kept the PTPA outside the institutional perimeter. The players refused, writing that "prioritizing the formation of the council over the core economic issues risks turning it into a process discussion that delays rather than advances meaningful progress".
The Paris flashpoint
On April 17, 2026 the French Tennis Federation announced the 2026 Roland Garros prize money: 61.7 million euros, up 9.5% from 2025. A figure that still trails the Australian Open, Wimbledon and US Open, and which on the share of revenues going to players, estimated at under 15%, has produced the sharpest reaction in years. Sabalenka openly raised the word boycott. Sinner did not rule it out.
On May 5 the FFT, led by president Gilles Moretton, issued an institutional statement: the Roland Garros model rests on a "specific economic framework" because the federation is a non-profit organization that reinvests its revenues, the increase for the early rounds is 11% to support those who live off prize money, and the tournament "is ready for a direct dialogue with the players" and "fully committed to ongoing consultation with all stakeholders in world tennis". The word PTPA does not appear. It is a dialogue the FFT is willing to open with tennis players as individuals, not with their union.
The PTPA, through executive director Ahmad Nassar, read the move for what it is. In a statement to Reuters, Nassar argued that the pressure on the Grand Slams is "a direct response to the threat of our lawsuit, and it is coming from the players", adding: "We appreciate and fully support the players who are standing up and fighting for what they deserve, a fair share of the revenues they help generate. There are deep structural changes that tennis desperately needs".
What changed after Djokovic's exit
Adding to the PTPA's complications was the exit of its co-founder. In January 2026 Novak Djokovic announced he was leaving the organization, citing "ongoing concerns about transparency, governance and the way my voice and image have been represented". The Serbian was not among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, but his presence gave the union a media weight that is hard to replace. The PTPA found itself with Djokovic out, with Alcaraz and Sinner having distanced themselves from the legal strategy while sharing its economic goals, and with the three Slams seizing the chance to deal directly with the top players as an informal group, which internally has taken the name *Project Red Eye* (with *Fair Share* floated as an alternative).
Why it matters
The battle being fought before and during Roland Garros is not only about a few more million euros in prize money. It is about who has the right to sit at the table when decisions are made on how to divide the hundreds of millions tennis generates every year. For the three Slams named as defendants, accepting the PTPA as a negotiating counterpart would mean effectively legitimizing the antitrust lawsuit and setting a precedent that reshapes the balance of power between tournaments and players. For the PTPA, staying outside the room means risking that the same players, under the pressure of the calendar and their contracts, accept deals that hollow out the lawsuit from within.
The Tennis Australia settlement showed that a deal is possible and that it splits the Slam front. The appointment of Craig Tiley, formerly CEO of Tennis Australia, as the new CEO of the USTA, made official in February 2026, is the signal that the Australian model could spread to the US Open. What remains to be seen is what Wimbledon and Roland Garros will do, the two European Slams that have so far chosen the hardest line. The coming weeks, between the start in Paris and the announcement of the Wimbledon prize money, will tell whether the door stays shut or someone finally tries to open it.
