Last week, a group of professional tennis players and the Professional Tennis Players Association (a group co-founded by Novak Djokovic) filed a 163-page complaint against the International Tennis Federation (which regulates professional tennis tournaments, including the four “Grand Slams”), the ATP Tour (which regulates men’s professional tennis tours), the WTA Tour (which regulates women’s professional tennis tours), and the International Tennis Integrity Agency (which investigates and disciplines players for doping and corruption). The complaint argues that the Defendants formed a cartel and implemented interlocking anticompetitive measures, including caps on tournament prize money and requirements that players sign over name, imagine, and likeness rights as a condition of competing. The result, the complaint alleges, is a “marketplace bereft of rivals competing for the players’ services”:
Defendants’ unlawful actions have destroyed fair competition, with devastating effects. Defendants’ scheme has resulted in a marketplace bereft of rivals competing for the players’ services. Because of the anticompetitive restraints that entrench their market power and bar new market entrants, Defendants and their co-conspirators operate insulated from competition and can freely pay players less and provide worse working conditions as a result. Defendants and their co-conspirators are able to divide the cartel’s profits while players and fans suffer. Because of Defendants’ actions, tournaments have no need (and no ability) to compete with one another to attract players with better pay or higher quality tournaments, alternative events are excluded from competing for the players’ labor, and players have lost the freedom to play where, when, and on what terms they want.
The case is already becoming combative. Over the weekend, the plaintiffs accused the ATP of trying to intimidate players at the Miami Open by demanding that players sign statements disavowing the lawsuit. The ATP responded yesterday, denying any wrongdoing.
The case is assigned to Judge Garnett.