Vasek Pospisil announces that Novak Djokovic's PTPA has been "acknowledged", says ATP has delayed the vote on its 30-year plan
Vasek Pospisil announced on Friday that the Professional Tennis Players' Association (PTPA), founded by himself and Novak Djokovic, is now recognized by the ATP.
Pospisil's statement on Twitter also mentioned that the PTPA has successfully convinced the ATP to delay the election on the 30-year plan. In addition, the ATP have also answered numerous questions posed to them by the Novak Djokovic-led Association.
"Three weeks ago, it became evident to our team that the ATP was going to vote on its proposed 30-year (now 31-year) plan," Pospisil wrote. "With support from the players, we developed a rapid response strategy to: 1) ensure the PTPA was acknowledged as an association created by the players for the players; 2) encourage the ATP to collaboratively address the multitude of questions our team presented to them about the plan; and 3) delay the vote. Today, we can report all three milestones have been achieved."
In the complete statement released by PTPA on their website, it has been mentioned that the ATP had sent a "letter" to the players on 29 June, explaining the needs of the 31-year plan and how it would benefit the sport. The plan, initiated by ATP chief Andrea Gaudenzi, aims to increase money in the sport by centralizing player data and, more importantly, receiving a bigger cut of the media, streaming and betting rights.
The plan is expected to come into effect in 2023, and could also potentially see players receive more prize money as profit-sharing comes into the picture.
But Novak Djokovic's PTPA raised several questions about the move, including why the ATP wanted to split the profit and not the revenue itself. PTPA also wanted to know why a vote to pass the new system was required as early as 2021 if the plan was scheduled to begin in 2023.
PTPA has published a complete list of questions on its website and has also shown the responses given by the ATP. Novak Djokovic and Co. have also graded each ATP response based on the amount of information and clarity provided.
Founder Novak Djokovic expressed his gratitude to the ATP for answering most of their queries but, in the same breath, admitted that their task is far from finished.
"Lots of work awaits us while we better the game for all," Novak Djokovic tweeted. "Very grateful we are making substantial progress. Thanks to @atptour for addressing our questions, thanks to @ptpaplayers for giving more feedback at http://ptpaplayers.com #weareinthistogether."
Novak Djokovic's PTPA has labeled ATP's response on improving conditions for lower-ranked players as "unsatisfactory"
ATP and Andrea Gaudenzi have always maintained that to improve conditions for the lower-ranked players, the top of the sport must be strengthened. He and the ATP believe that that would permeate all levels of the sport, thus benefitting the lower-ranked players too eventually.
This strengthening the top of the sport has been one of the main issues that the PTPA has contested. The player organization is adamant about lower-ranked getting a lot more incentives than they presently do.
As such, Novak Djokovic and Co asked the ATP to provide more clarity on how their 31-year plan would benefit the lower strata of tennis players. The complete response given by ATP can be viewed here, but it has been labeled as "unsatisfactory" by the PTPA.
The PTPA have issued a counter-argument to the answer provided by the ATP, which can be viewed here. Below is a snippet from their response, where they point out that they are not wrong to demand the functionalities of the 31-year plan now since the ATP aim to get their new system sanctioned with immediate effect.
"Why can’t the plan state how that will be done and when that will be done so all interested parties understand how everyone will benefit tomorrow since the ATP is asking everyone to buy into the plan today," wrote PTPA.