A telenovela is a Latin American soap opera. Tennis has its own drama — call it a tennisnovela — that may culminate this week during a marathon, five-day ATP Tour board meeting in Palm Springs, Calif., where President and Executive Chairman Chris Kermode could get voted down for a new contract. If that happens, Kermode would be a lame duck until his term expires at the end of the year.
Kermode’s chief antagonist is board member and former pro Justin Gimelstob, who is viewed within tennis circles as wanting Kermode’s job but who has been dealing with his own drama lately. Last fall Gimelstob was charged with assault stemming from a Halloween night altercation in Los Angeles with Randall Kaplan, a former friend who Gimelstob accuses of interfering in a custody dispute with the latter’s ex-wife. Gimelstob is challenging the assault charges and has turned down a plea agreement. Some members of the seven-person board asked him to step down last December, but Gimelstob refused. He declined to comment last week.
Justin Gimelstob (left) leads a faction of ATP board members who are dissatisfied with current President Chris Kermode.getty images (2)
The Gimelstob-led anti-Kermode faction feels the ATP is mismanaged. One of the biggest complaints is that prize money increases are subsidized in part by the tour rather than being fully paid by the individual tournaments. The money from the ATP comes partly from the players, who feel they are in effect paying themselves.
“It’s like the NFL paying for the salary cap increase, and not the teams,” said one source, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks this week.
In fact, the ATP is now telling members that profit was flat in 2018 after initial projections were more in line with 2017’s $19 million surplus. The anti-Kermode faction blames this in part on the subsidy.
Philip Galloway, the ATP’s chief financial officer, agreed that profit flattened in 2018, but said the ATP is a not-for-profit. “It is frustrating when people focus on a net result when that is not an objective right,” he said. He added that the subsidies will phase out over the next few years.
Tension between player and tourney reps is nothing new. The ATP houses both management and labor under one roof, with three player representatives and three tournament reps. What’s new is the increasing outspokenness among some of the players. Their board representatives are voted in by the Player Council, whose leader — No. 1-ranked Novak Djokovic — has called for a breakaway players union.
When player board rep Roger Rasheed last year voted for a modest prize money increase, the 10-member council voted him off. The council this week is expected to vote on a full-time replacement.
Another aspect of Kermode’s tenure that has generated controversy is that he has spearheaded the new ATP Team Cup. Set to launch in January, that event will now squeeze into a calendar with the Laver Cup (in October) and the Davis Cup (November). The anti-Kermode faction believes the ATP head should have managed a merger with the Davis Cup.
Not all players are anti-Kermode. Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka have come out in support of their leader, underscoring the fact that the players are hardly unified.
In addition, ATP revenue has surged under Kermode as corporate sponsors bought into the high-quality circuit. In 2017, revenue was $147 million, according to the tour’s most recently available tax return, up from $92 million in 2013. (The revenue is just for the tour and does not include revenue from the individual tournaments.)
And there is some good news to vote on this week. One item on the board agenda is to renew the lucrative Emirates Airline sponsorship, the priciest in the ATP orbit. Emirates had been paying about $13 million annually.
