To Safeguard Its Future, Tennis Seeks Unity. Even With the French Open.

The seven stakeholders are the leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments, the men’s tour, the women’s tour and Haggerty’s I.T.F. Each controls different parts of the calendar and the tennis ecosystem, which helps explain why infighting remains as much a part of the game as the drop shot.

As in all sports affected by the pandemic, the future will depend on how long the pain lasts. Long-term losses could mean that tennis’s stakeholders might finally be willing to cooperate and fix some long-term problems, above all the sport’s overstuffed, oft-conflicted schedule.

“When times are good, no one really wants to change,” Kermode said in an interview from Monaco on Thursday. “You only get people’s attention when businesses start stopping their incremental growth, and you really get their attention when it starts to go down. No one envisaged this situation, but this is the time where it can have a massive reset.”

Though Kermode thinks that sponsorships and the market for media rights will recede for quite a while, he also sees hope in the potential for unity among the sport’s stakeholders. The French Open’s move appears to have helped the cause, if only by allying every other key organization against it.

“I think if this goes all the way through 2020 and there is no more tennis this year,” Kermode said, “it will be a true turning point for the sport, a radical moment.”

After the round of cancellations on Wednesday, which included Wimbledon and all the preliminary grass-court events, the sport is on hold at all levels until at least July 13.

The break could be considerably longer unless the coronavirus situation improves significantly in Europe, home to the majority of tour players, and in North America, where the main hardcourt season begins in July and culminates with the United States Open in New York.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/sports/wimbledon-grand-slams-canceled.html