Gaudenzi, Nadal Talk OneVision

ATP

Grand Slam record holder Rafael Nadal sat down with ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi in Rome recently to discuss the direction of the sport and specifically OneVision, the Tour’s transformational game plan for building its future.

The pair spoke about several pillars of OneVision’s Phase One, set to deploy January 2023, including enhanced prizemoney and financial transparency, the calendar and a focus on the Tour’s premium product, the ATP Masters 1000 tournaments, aided by enhanced category terms.

OneVision includes the alignment of player and tournament interests through a long-term prize money agreement, which includes a game-changing 50-50 profit-sharing mechanism, already in place at the Masters 1000s, that allows players to share in the financial success of tournaments.

“I think it is a win-win formula,” Nadal said.

Gaudenzi offered: “I think it can be game-changing for the relationship and trust between players and tournaments because we want to provide the visibility to the players on the economics of the tournaments and also have players share our future success. If the tournaments do well financially, the players will get 50 per cent of the profits on top of the prize money.”

At the Masters 1000 level, Base Prize Money will increase by more than $15m by 2025. The Fixed Bonus Pool will see double-digit growth and will cover the Top 30 players (up from 12). Separately, a brand-new Variable Bonus Pool, linked to Profit Sharing, has the potential to provide further financial support to more than 140 players.

Gaudenzi and Nadal discussed the need for tennis stakeholders to recognise that they aren’t competing against one another, rather other sports and entertainment platforms.

“Let's work together to improve our sport, instead of fighting with each other all the time,” Gaudenzi said. “Because the competition is soccer, football, American football, golf, not competing against each other.”

“Oh, I agree with that,” Nadal said. “I think we lose a lot of energy fighting between each other; tournaments are fighting for themselves and players are fighting for ourselves.”

The pair also discussed the calendar and an enhanced focus on the ATP Masters 1000s, where significant change will be seen from 2023. The ATP Tour calendar has been redesigned to create more prime-time tennis across the season, meeting fan demand to see more matches featuring the biggest stars at the biggest tournaments.

From next year, Masters 1000s in Madrid, Rome and Shanghai will become 12-day events alongside Indian Wells and Miami. Canada and Cincinnati will follow suit in 2025.

Gaudenzi told Nadal: “It is also important to promote the premium product. Fans want to see the top players playing in the biggest events in the world. What is the importance of a Masters for you?”

Nadal responded: “The Masters 1000s are huge events. Sometimes from my personal perspective it is Grand Slams and the rest of the tournaments much lower, so I think our goal from being the ATP is to put our tournaments closer and closer to the Slams in terms of promotion and importance. We need to encourage the tournaments to keep growing.”

OneVision also provides longer-term category protection for tournaments that incentivises tournaments to invest in their future, resulting in improved infrastructure and enhanced fan experience. Tournaments will be held accountable for meeting new, higher standards across multiple aspects of event delivery.

“It is a great product and we need to encourage the tournaments to keep growing,” Nadal said.

OneVision includes two phases. Phase One, which has been approved by the ATP Board, is focused on aligning interests of all tournaments and players and enhancing the Tour's premium product.

Phase Two, in collaboration with the WTA, ITF and the four Grand Slams, will focus on a new, unified governance for the sport and unlocking the ultimate fan experience.