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The Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA) has partnered with CSM Sport & Entertainment to deliver collective partnership opportunities for members of the professional body.
Confirmed:
- CSM to serve as the official partnership development agency of the PTPA
- Deal also covers the professional tennis players’ body’s for-profit Winners Alliance affiliate
- Agency and PTPA will collaborate on the overarching partnership strategy
Context:
Founded in 2019 by Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic and Canadian pro Vasek Pospisil, the PTPA’s goal is to improve conditions and to provide a ‘unified voice’ for tennis players, outside of the existing channels offered by the the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) men’s body and Women’s Tennis Association (WTA). The Winners Alliance was set up in August last year with the aim of maximising off-court opportunities for tennis stars and their agents.
Comment:
In November, the PTPA’s executive director Ahmad Nassar told the SportsPro Podcast: “With group licensing and commercial opportunities, I’m never going to ask a player to forsake any of his or her opportunities. What we are in search of are those incremental opportunities. So, what chances do we have as a group and as the group representing the players to build products that may exist in other sports – like trading cards – that don’t exist, for the most part, in tennis.
“Video games is another element. What can we do in areas that maybe individual players are not able to do things, [such as] sports betting globally.”
Coming next:
The new pact between the PTPA and CSM will aim to open up new commercial opportunities for tennis stars, while the focus on players ‘as a collective’ marks a shift away from the conventional model in tennis, whereby players and agents seek out their own endorsement deals independently.
