A hectic and dizzying week for tennis began March 8 with the shocking cancellation of the sport’s “fifth major,” the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, due to the coronavirus threat. By the end of the week, suspension of both ATP Tour and ITF play at least until mid-April was almost expected.
The Miami Open also was scrapped for March 12, followed later in the day by the next tournament on the WTA calendar, the Volvo Car Open.
“If you had asked me two months ago if I thought the tour would be suspended and Indian Wells and Miami would have been canceled, I would have chuckled,” said Bill Oakes, a former ATP tournament director.
The WTA stopped short of a suspension of play, releasing a statement saying that it would make a decision about the European clay-court season this week.
“The worldwide nature of our sport and the international travel required presents significant risks and challenges in today’s circumstances, as do the increasingly restrictive directives issued by local authorities,” ATP Chairman Andrea Gaudenzi said in a statement. “We continue to monitor this on a daily basis, and we look forward to the Tour resuming when the situation improves.”
The same international and individualistic qualities that make pro tennis unique and intriguing also make it harder for the sport to deal with a highly contagious, fast-moving, border-hopping viral pandemic. For instance, the ATP Tour plays events in 30 countries, while the WTA is in 29. Pro tennis players hail from around 100 countries. Tennis, Oakes said, is “not homogenous … which offers such great opportunity but does create further complexity.”
That includes its governance, which is as fragmented as any sport in existence. The ATP, WTA and ITF run competitions that include tournaments owned and operated by independent entities based all over the globe. The four Grand Slams oversee themselves.
There are great discrepancies among the tournaments, too. Thirty-eight of the ATP Tour’s 68 events are 250-level tournaments, including three of the five tournaments that are canceled because of the ATP suspension. The average budget of those tournaments ranges from $3 million to $5 million, and nets between $100,000 and $125,000 per event, according to Oakes, who ran the ATP 250 Winston-Salem (N.C.) Open for eight years from 2011-19. Oakes said ATP tournaments don’t usually have event-cancellation insurance, and that he never bought a cancellation policy during his years running a 250 event.
“I think the concern for them is great,” he said.
With play paused, questions quickly snowball. How will fans’ ticket refunds or credits be handled? What about the many pro tennis players who need to play to make a living? How will the cancellation of events affect players’ 52-week rankings? And is there room in the tours’ crowded calendars to reschedule events?
“I feel for them,” Oakes said of the sport’s decision-makers. “I think that they’ve got a lot of tough work ahead of them as they’re evaluating.”
The implications of suspended play leak into the different veins of the tennis industry, including broadcasting. Indian Wells is one of Tennis Channel’s biggest productions of the year, but its cancellation left the network with a gaping two-week programming hole. Tennis Channel already planned to cover 17 total hours of this week’s ATP Challenger event in nearby Phoenix, then expanded the coverage to 60 hours. But the Challenger event was canceled last Thursday, leaving another hole to fill.
“We’re going to have to be really ingenious in how we do it,” said Tennis Channel President Ken Solomon. “Hopefully, we can be a respite for people because I think unfortunately there will be a whole lot more people at home watching television.”
