Pro tennis in peril
The situation is so dire, some tournaments might not come back.
The moment Bob Moran received word that the PRL tennis tournament he runs in Charleston, S.C., was being called off because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he halted construction on the grandstands being erected just outside his office.
“They had put the first layer in place, and then that same day they were taking it right back down again,” said Moran, the tournament director for the Volvo Car Open, a women’s clay-court event that was scheduled to begin last week. “Everything counts.”
With pro tennis on hold until at least June — and perhaps much longer — the sport’s administrators and players are scrambling to cut their losses as tournaments are postponed or canceled en masse. Looming over those adjustments, there’s a threat — that some events, particularly those on the lower rungs of the men’s and women’s tours, will not survive.
“This is real,” said Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA. “The events are taking significant hits by not operating.”
The size of the hit for each tournament depends on numerous factors, including the timing of a postponement, the operating budget, sponsorship agreements and the agreement with the venue.
Insurance largely will not help. Wimbledon, which was canceled Wednesday, is one tournament that has some coverage for a pandemic. The vast majority of tour events have none. In fact, many WTA and ATP events have skipped full cancellation insurance altogether, with annual fees that can range from $200,000 to $700,000, depending on a tournament’s revenue.
“We have insurance against an earthquake or an act of terrorism and stuff like that, but no tournament I know of has insurance against this specific virus, so the insurance is gone,” said Edwin Weindorfer, whose company operates grass-court events in Mallorca, Spain; and the German cities of Berlin and Stuttgart. All three events are at risk of being canceled in June.
“The tournaments are taking tremendous hits, and, obviously, the players will take a tremendous hit because they are not having the opportunity to compete for multiple weeks,” Simon said. “I think that’s one of the challenges everyone is working on. How do we balance the significant losses all members are taking as well as the losses the tour is going to take?”