Andy (2:14)

There's only two options. So.

Mike (2:16)

Right.

Andy (2:17)

One, this is obvious. I have a lot of questions about it.

JW (2:23)

So.

Andy (2:23)

But as far as like where the calendar goes, preempting Australia is what some People are saying, I think that's difficult. I'm not sure you can take the thunder. You know, Australia is probably the only thing in tennis that benefits from people actually having time to look forward to it. Like otherwise it's just a run on sentence. Also, if you do that, then are you shifting the entire Middle Eastern swing to before that or are you screwing over the other Middle Eastern tournaments in February or March, whatever it is, before Indian Wells? I think it has to slot into that, that February because then who are you competing with? You're competing with Rotterdam. You're competing with, you know, those tournaments, which seems like an easier competition than the lead up to Australia. There's no way, if Craig Tyler has a say in this, that it's, it cruises in before Australia, in my opinion. A couple of things I want to get your opinion on jw, the fine print matters and stuff like this, right? So we're creating a masters 1000,000 out of thin air, right? And we're just going to make up licenses now. So now we can print money is basically what we, what we can do. We can just. Great, here's another one. We can print money. We're setting precedent for, for that non mandatory. So let me, let me, let me just throw it out there for, for you chuckers. What, what, how I read non mandatory if I'm a player and if I roll back the clock to when I was one, that could command an appearance fee. The protection for the Masters 1000 is not to have to pay their players directly is that they're mandatory. And you basically opt in to the tour schedule as an independent contractor. The mandatory events fall underneath. They basically hold your participation as a negotiating tool and you have to fall in line with the mandatory things. And if it's non mandatory, that means that you do not have to play it contractually to be a part of the ATB Tour. Okay? That means appearance fees. These appearance fees are going to be massive and the players have a lot of leverage right now because there's no chance that Saudi is going to want to have this masters 1000 and then not have Sinner and Alcaraz show up and then not have, you know, whoever else show up, right? They're going to want that trip from Australia. I've, I was texting with an agent friend of ours who has been on the show before. He says absolutely open season on, on appearance fees for, for this tournament, non mandatory to me. They're celebrating that as like, oh listen, we're, you know, we're coachable.

Mike (5:02)

This is Cool.

Andy (5:02)

We're going to just create a new set of rules. This is going to be chaos. This is going to be the Wild west as far as appearance fees, which is good for the players, I guess.

JW (5:08)

JW Yeah, I mean, just make the point too, that right now, just to be clear, these Masters events do not pay appearance fees, or at least they're not supposed to. A couple of points. There is so much money going on that there is now a. Basically a buyback fee. So the ATP will probably be using some of that cash infusion to buy tournaments and perhaps shuttle those tournaments, if indeed this is February. Again, a couple of things really weird, like you make a big splashy announcement, announcement like this, wouldn't you kind of want to tell people when this event is going to happen? But let's assume this is in February. Craig Tylee wins. He gets to keep his January pure. This is bad news for South America in particular. There are some promising up and coming players from South America. So it's a pity that those events are going to be lost. Monte Carlo is not.

Andy (6:00)

Are you saying that by virtue of this tournament taking place, it weakens the South American stance or you thinking it's going to get rid of it?

JW (6:09)

I think if there is a buyback fee, if there's a buyback pool that the ATP is going to use to essentially extinguish some tournaments and euthanize them, wouldn't obvious candidates be the tournaments that are being held concurrently? I think you're right. There's going to be a ton of money. There's going to be appearance fees. I mean, we can talk about. We talked about six Kings and how preposterous the revenues were from that. The payoffs versus the revenues. What will that do? Are we going to see a similar kind of event here? Are the players going to play? Are there going to be women's events? Most of the, you know, we hear all this talk about one plus one is three and how all of these mandatories are so much better when men and women play. You can't do it in Monte Carlo because of space issues. Indoor makes it tough, but is there a women's component to this?

Andy (6:57)

Mike, I'll get to you.

JW (6:58)

There are a lot of.

Mike (6:59)

I want to.

JW (7:00)

Go ahead.

Andy (7:01)

I'll get to you in one second. But. All right, so here's what we know. 56 players. So the cutoff is low. It's not like a Miami and Indian Wells where you have 96.

Mike (7:11)

Right?

Andy (7:11)

It's 56 players, meaning it's going to Go over a week.

Mike (7:15)

So they said one week. Yeah, it said in the press release it's going to be a week.

JW (7:18)

Yep.

Andy (7:19)

So that automatically lends itself to potentially not having women because you cannot play two tournaments simultaneously of a draw that size in that. And that's originally why we did the extended events before it just got fucking looney tunes. But yeah, 56 players in a week so you know they're going to go, well, it's only a week. You guys have been asking for a week long tournament. Now the other thing that, that I'm interested in is we have this non mandatory status where basically we're just kind of making up our own rules and adding, adding tournaments which if they use I would love to know. And we'll know we won't get it because there's no specificity ever provided by any of the power players in, in tennis. How much of this revenue and how much of this deal is going to go to buybacks? Because that is the only, one of the only ways that you're going to get a shorter schedule eventually is to buy back the lane duck tournaments. The tournaments that are underwater. Once you get those, you're not buying tournaments. You're buying weeks in the calendar.

JW (8:21)

Right.

Andy (8:22)

You're buying weeks back in the calendar which has to happen at, at some point. So I would love it if they said, you know, X amount of this deal is to get back and to get claw back a month of, of the season. Now they don't normally deal in, in, in details like I, I don't think we'll know what those numbers actually are. Mike, do you have anything to level setter? Should we kick to player reactions?

Mike (8:46)

No, I, I just want to level seven. When we talk about February, you were talking about South America on the men's schedule. Right? Like right now you have Doha year. I assume this will be relatively the same but in 2026 Doha starts, you know, week seven which is February 16th and then they have Rio and they have Delray.

Andy (9:04)

It used to be before the Aussie Open by the way.

Mike (9:05)

And so they, so basically the first two weeks of February currently are like Montpelier Multi city Davis cup qualifier. Dallas I think is probably, it's not going to be good for Dallas.

Andy (9:15)

This is not good for Dallas.

Mike (9:16)

Rotterdam and Buenos Aires are the week of the 9th. When you look at the women's schedule and you were saying there are two 1000s in February already, they really, they only have you know, week five which is the February 2nd and then they have Qatar and then they Have Dubai so the women are already in that.

Andy (9:33)

You don't need a, you don't need a coed event when you already have two 1,000.

Mike (9:36)

You don't need a co. So, so really if you're going to put a week long, you know, 1,000, why are we restricting this thing to a Friday to Sunday? Like why wouldn't they start in the middle of the week, February 2nd and end in the middle of the week of the next week?

Andy (9:52)

No, because then you're taking to. I don't, I don't, I'm just saying.

Mike (9:55)

It, it wouldn't shock me that they would do something completely.

Andy (9:57)

To me that's a problem that doesn't exist. One, there's space in the schedule in February to John's point. They're going to have all the leverage. Either we're going to buy you back and, or you're going to play ball and adjust. Now the Dubai tournament, what happens with that? The 500, does that lead into, is it afterwards? You know there's a lot of different things but also like if, if you're South America something can be said for. It's essentially could act as. Because it's a non mandatory and we're just making up the rules. Does that mean a 500 can go against a 1000 for the first time ever?

Mike (10:31)

Oh wow.

JW (10:32)

Right.

Andy (10:32)

Can South America's. Can South America stay and Fonseca play in Brazil for. You know and I'm just making this up but can he play for 500 points instead of a thousand? Right. If all the money's already taken by the top 10, do you go? I actually don't know if we're just making up rules and saying it's non mandatory. If it's non mandatory does that fall under a TV rights deal or is that its own silo where it's like we have special rules.

Mike (10:55)

They got to share. They're getting a share in the, in ATP media according to the press release. Like all the other 1,000.

Andy (11:00)

A lot of, a lot of questions. I, I, I feel like we're, I feel like we're going to deal in vagaries for, for a while. But who are we? We.

Mike (11:08)

I mean is there, is there a possibility it becomes like Monte Carlo and it can be counted as a 500 under the mandatory for the top 30 players?

Andy (11:14)

Oh it'll, it'll get how however they can get as many players as possible to Saudi Arabia.

Mike (11:21)

Like make it an optional so that daddy's happy. So daddy's.

Andy (11:24)

That's that, that's what they're going to do. Yes.

JW (11:26)

So, yeah, I mean, keep in mind too, I mean, the, the money is sloshing through is not. It's going to a lot of places. One place it's going that I don't think we talk about enough. This is like an expansion team in pro sport. The other Master Series events, the other thousands are getting a fee by letting someone else in the club. So they're getting taken care of. I am really interested to see what happens to the players, what their bonus pool looks like, what the prize money is going to be to this event. I think you raise a really good point. Are there other media avenues? There's clearly a Netflix deal that's already in place. One thing that struck me, you just had Novak, Carlos Alcaraz, Taylor, Fritz, Zverev, Sitipas, you had all these guys in Saudi Arabia and then you wait 72 hours till everyone's gone to announce a new tour stop. Wouldn't you want the best players in the sport to be part of this photo op?

Mike (12:23)

Wasn't Novak on stage paid for by these people complaining about the schedule.

JW (12:27)

Wait, Andy. Andy's waving his finger.

Andy (12:29)

No, I know. Because, John, that's a separate deal if I'm a player. If I'm three or four in the world and I'm here to play six Kings and I've been given my talking points and then they go, oh, yeah, bonus, bonus, bonus sales job, I'd go, nope, that's a separate deal. I would not comment on it until I was outside of the country. No chance. Because you're negotiating against yourself if you say something that they don't like. That's only a headache as you're heading out of the country. That ain't it for me. If I put on my players hat for a second, there's no chance that I include that into a six Kings deal. You know, yes in theory and no in practice, I think.

JW (13:15)

Can we also spare a thought, as we're fond of saying, for Doha in Dubai, who paid for their sanction and have run an event, you played in it several times yourself for more than 25 years. And I think they're thinking, wait a second, there are thousands that you can now make out of whole cloth. Well, nice. Thanks for telling us. We would have upgraded our prize money, we would have upgraded our facilities. How did Saudi Arabia get to jump the line?

Andy (13:39)

They bought seven. Seven other properties, ranking systems, software plays. They bought seven other things. And not just this isn't a tournament business. This is another other business.

Mike (13:46)

400 million in before this.

Andy (13:48)

Yeah, yeah, Techie. Sean, real quick before we have to let JW go and jw, if you got to fall off, go ahead, but we have some sound from players. Sean, can you, can you tell us who we're about to hear from in succession? Yeah, we got a couple press conference clips from Carlos Alcarez Demonur, Casper Rude, Ben Shelton, and Yannick Sinner.

Mike (14:08)

These are classic. These are historical. These are before this announcement. Right. These aren't. Okay.

JW (14:12)

Yep.

Casper Ruud (14:13)

Well, I think that the schedule, yeah, as I said, is super. Is really tight. They. They have. They have to do something with that, with the schedule. I think there are too many mandatory tournament too many in a row. So they put in some. Some rules that we. We are.

JW (14:35)

We.

Yannick Sinner (14:35)

We.

Casper Ruud (14:36)

That we have to play master thousands 500 tournaments, whatever it is. But there are. There are too many. Too many rules that the. We as tennis player, we have to. We. We are not allowed to. To have choice if we have to play or not.

Andy (14:53)

So.

Casper Ruud (14:56)

Yeah, to be honest, I, I have to consider in. In the future if I have to skip some mandatory tournament just to maintain my physical conditions in a good shape. And obviously it is more than a physical condition. I think mentally it is really demanding as well, playing so many tournaments, mandatory tournaments in a row or playing so much tournaments without having that days or to have my time to rest up mentally. So, yeah, I will consider it to skip some mandatory tournaments just to the benefit of myself mentally. So I agree with, with iga and I think a lot of players are gonna. Are gonna do. Are gonna do that.

Yannick Sinner (15:54)

No one's got a solution. But the solution is simple. You're short on the schedule. Right? Like, what's not normal is that for the last three, four years, I've had two days off after Davis cup, and I've gone straight into preseason and straight into the new season again. And yeah, sure, I mean, I could have maybe taken a week or a week and a half, but then that means my preseason is two weeks long and I'm already starting in Australia, which is, you know, my, my home ground where. Where I want to be doing well. And once you start, you don't finish until November 24th, right? So it's. It's just never ending. That's the sheer fact of it. And the way it's structured, as Casper put it out there, I had to deal with that. I'm still dealing with that right now. Right. My, My ranking right now consists of two zeros because I was injured and I couldn't play Cincinnati Montreal, well, three and Shanghai, which is ridiculous if you ask me. Right. But that's just the rules of the tour and, and, and where we are right now. The solution is are you short on it? Because what's going to happen is players careers are gonna get shorter and shorter because they're just gonna burn out mentally. It's just too much tennis.

Iga Swiatek (17:31)

Obviously they have a lot of money and I think that's, you know, I know that what I'm gonna say will probably be described as sport washing, but it seems to me that their new leader, Salman is his name I believe, if I'm not wrong, maybe not sure if I pronounce it right, wants to do something especially a lot of things in sport and wants to maybe change the country, maybe make it a bit more westernized and for better or good, you know, athletes going there could lead to a change, who knows? And I know that I might look very naive saying this because you know, people will say, oh, that's just sport washing, covering up what's actually going on. But if they never start anywhere, I'm not sure if there will ever be a change. So I've chosen not to go so far. But it seems to me that it's inevitable that they will, they will, they will somehow be big in tennis in the future and they already have the next gen finals.

JW (18:31)

The difficult part at you know, these two week tournaments is you're playing, you're playing two set matches, three set matches and you're getting a day off in between, which you know, everyone talks about in the locker room now it's the level of tennis suffers. The level is definitely higher in those one week tournaments and when you're playing two out of three sets and, and you're playing back to back days and you get into a consistent rhythm of playing, it's tough with the start and stop. And I think that a combination of those things is probably what players are talking about and what's throwing a lot of guys off.

Ben Shelton (19:06)

I love the one week events. I love when you see the tournament in Monaco, for example, you have, for Monte Carlo, you have this one week event and you have the first round matches what are incredibly good, you know, and if some, if one good, good seeded player loses the next match, it's an incredible match still, you know, and, and, and you have the quarterfinals and you know exactly when you buy the tickets, you know, you have the quarterfinals and then you have the semifinal which is Saturday, and then you have final Sunday. And now I lost a little bit. The view of when does Actually a final is, you know, because it used to be always Sunday. Now here it's Monday. In Toronto, it's Wednesday or Thursday, you know, so it's difficult even for us players. We lose a little bit the days of the week, you know, I would say so that's the only thing. But if I have a day off or not, it can be good. If I have a three hour match today, tomorrow I have a day off, it's good. If not, I would love to, I would like to play tomorrow, yes. But if I would have an incredibly long, long match today, I would love to play Monday, you know, so it's, it's always depends on, on the view.

Mike (20:35)

Wow. So I want to level set with you guys just for the audience at large because I'm obviously still learning about this stuff, like what is a mandatory schedule in the ATP. And so essentially it's, you have to play if all four majors. And this applies for all the people that as of November 11th are in the top 30 of the ATP, right? So the top 30 players heading into next season are required to play all four majors. 8 of 91000 events. Monte Carlo's optional, but if they choose to play Monte Carlo, it can count for one of the ATP 500 events they're required to play. They're required to play five ATP 500 events, including one of those post US Open. And then if they qualify for the ATP finals, they have to play the ATP finals unless they're injured or what it. So they, so it's essentially 4, 8, 5 and 1. And then if, hypothetically if you're to make, if you're to make the final weekend, right, of, of all of these, if you have the most incredible season, just the, just the requirement is roughly 200 days.

Andy (21:42)

So also it's like okay, top 30 year end you have, you're required to play this. There's not even a guarantee that you're in these fucking tournaments on your own rig. If you have a dumpster fire for six months of the next year, you're not even in. So you're required to play tournaments like contractually that you may not even qualify for. Like think about someone, men cheek. Okay, he'll be there because he's good. But like the lion's share of his points are from Miami. He loses those, let's say he loses first round, is he back down at 40 or 50? And then if he doesn't perform well from there, like there's every, you know, so it just doesn't make any sense. Like, and it's also interesting that the, the, the non mandatory now with, with the Saudis, the non mandatory 1000 events that the players, and don't take my word for it, I'm not projecting.

JW (22:27)

Right.

Andy (22:27)

I'm telling you what I liked. But then it's backed up by you just heard five minutes of audio of the players saying the same thing. The two non mandatory 1000s. One week.

Mike (22:36)

One week.

Andy (22:37)

So we're going to make it mandatory that you stay for this shit show of 12 days.

JW (22:40)

Exactly.

Mike (22:41)

And they have appearance fees.

Andy (22:43)

And they have appearance fees. Exactly. Jw, any, any party thoughts because the emergency pod is going a little long now.

JW (22:50)

I was going to say it's a long emergency. We have seen the role of money in the sport and this obviously was a needle that had to be thread. You call it non mandatory, then the players, maybe that buys you a little bit of COVID with the players. There are contributions to bonus pools, there will be appearance fees. I'm sure the same Six Kings profligacy will find its way into this event. But yeah, you've got players lining up saying the season's too long, there are too many tournaments, the demands are too much, the travel is too much. It takes a physical toll, it takes a mental health toll. So what do we do? We add a splashy event and try and cram it into February. Welcome to tennis, everyone.

Andy (23:31)

Here's the job that in jw. I know you have to go, so if you go, don't sweat it. But the job that I will never, ever have, I'm sure if I'm the ATP leadership here and I'm announcing this tournament, you have that, that press release, Mike, close by. Can you read that?

Mike (23:52)

This is from Ghenzi. He said, quote in the press release, he said, quote, this is a proud moment for us and the result of a journey that has been years in the making. Saudi Arabia has shown a genuine commitment to tennis, not just at the professional level, but also growing the game more broadly at all levels. PIF's ambition for the sport is clear and we believe fans and players alike will be amazed by what's coming.

Andy (24:16)

Here's what I would have liked to have heard. If I'm in charge and if there is a buyback plan, which is like I'm hoping, I'm hoping that these are resources. If he says, listen, we have to add this. We need resources to make the calendar better. We just have to. There are contracts that are put in place that cost money to unwind. This gives up. This gives us the opportunity to have realistic conversations to shorten the season. End quote. All this. Other people will see it. Grow the game. Like, that's all, that's all fine. That's been said in every press release for the last 40 years. With anything, grow the game, you know, whatever, that's fine. Also, if this helps us get to a plan to shorten the season, which is the number one thing that is actually unifying amongst the players, you just heard six different players say the exact same, a different version, their own style on it, but of basically the same shit. And it's the same stuff we talked about last week. Right. It's just too long. You can't, you can't do this. And we're adding another week. We're adding another week. Fine. Whenever there's a week added, you have to demand an offset. And if there was ever a need for representation for the player side, non mandatory event seems like a good leverage point. Participation in the Saudi event in 2028 seems like you have your piece of leverage. Thanks for watching Server.