The ATP Tour, its Super 9 Tournaments and Swiss-based
ISL have signed a 10-year, $1.2B agreement, effective
January 1, 2000, giving ISL the exclusive marketing,
broadcast and licensing rights for the ATP Tour, the ATP
Tour World Championships and the individual Super 9 events.
ISL will market the commercial rights for the Super 9 events
and the ATP Tour World Championships and will sell the TV
rights for more than 40 ATP Tour Championship and World
Series Tournaments. ISL will also become the official
marketing agency of the ATP Tour (ATP Tour). The FINANCIAL
TIMES' John Barrett wrote that the future of men's tennis
"seems to be financially secure following the announcement,"
as ISL "has guaranteed" to pay the ATP $120M annually in
exchange for its exclusive rights. The ATP would not say
what it was receiving currently from the rights, but
"indicated" that the deal would "boost its revenues from
competitions by about" 17.5%. The deal also calls for any
revenue in excess of $1.2B to be "divided among" the ATP,
the Super 9s and ISL. ISL Managing Dir Daniel Beauvois is
"confident of finding" the 10-12 "big corporate partners"
and the four to six official suppliers "needed to provide
the bulk of the funds," and Mercedes-Benz, an $11M a year
ATP partner, has "already agreed" to continue its tie with
the Tour. But Barrett wrote that "untangling the 200 or so
existing sponsorships" and the Super 9 events' individual TV
deals will be "complex and time consuming," and "could take
two or three years to complete" (FINANCIAL TIMES, 4/24).
SECURITY: Tennis Canada CEO Bob Moffatt, on how the
deal impacts their event, the Canadian Open: "It guarantees
us security for the next 10 years and also guarantees that
the top players must play in this event" (CP, 4/24).
ISL MATCHING IMG STROKE FOR STROKE: The SPORTSBUSINESS
JOURNAL's Daniel Kaplan examines the "duel" between IMG and
ISL over the "business of tennis." ISL has formed a tennis
division for the first time and won marketing rights for the
women's KB Fed Cup, while IMG "is in talks" to acquire
rights to the Ericsson Open. But IMG is "still struggling"
to land a title sponsor for the WTA Tour and has seen some
defections of its top-ranked players. A&P Tennis Classic
Dir John Korff: "Lately IMG has lost some. They lost
Sampras, they lost Hingis, they lost Kournikova, so there is
some jockeying going on" (SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 4/26).
