The ATP promised a transformation of professional tennis when it launched OneVision in 2022. Three years into Phase One, the results are real — but so are the limits.
If you follow the business of tennis, you’ve heard the word OneVision a lot over the past three years. The ATP’s landmark strategic plan has been the backdrop to almost every significant commercial development on the men’s tour since 2023 — the profit-sharing announcements, the Masters 1000 expansions, the data rights deals, the Baseline player welfare programme.
What you hear less often is a clear-eyed assessment of what Phase One actually delivered, what it didn’t, and what it tells us about the harder work still to come.
I’ve been watching this closely from Singapore, where the commercial development of tennis in Asia is both the most exciting opportunity in the sport and the clearest test of whether the ATP’s strategy is working at a global level. Here’s my read.
What OneVision Phase One Actually Was
Before evaluating results, it’s worth being precise about what Phase One set out to do.
Launched in June 2022 and active from January 2023, Phase One had four core components:
50-50 profit sharing. For the first time in ATP history, profits generated at Masters 1000 events — above the base prize money floor — would be split equally between players and tournaments. Crucially, tournament financials would be independently audited, giving players full transparency on event economics for the first time ever.
Centralised media and data rights. All tournament media rights would be aggregated into ATP Media, the tour’s broadcast arm. A new entity — Tennis Data Innovations — would be created specifically to centralise and commercially exploit data rights across the tour.
Masters 1000 expansion. Five Masters 1000 events would expand from eight to twelve days, increasing playing time, commercial inventory, and broadcast hours at the tour’s premium tier.
Governance reform. The ATP Board would be restructured and expanded to include representation from ATP 250 and 500 tournaments, alongside new conflict-of-interest protections.
These were not incremental tweaks. They were structural changes to how the tour operates commercially. The question is whether the results match the ambition.
Where Phase One Delivered
The profit-sharing numbers are the most concrete measure of Phase One’s impact — and they are genuinely impressive.
In 2022, the first year of the formula, $12.2 million in additional profit-sharing was distributed to players on top of base prize money at the Masters 1000s. In 2023, total ATP player compensation reached $241.6 million — the largest single-year increase in the tour’s history, a $37.5 million rise from the year before. By 2024, profit-sharing from Masters 1000 events alone had reached $18.3 million, a 2.7 times increase on 2023, taking total ATP player compensation to a record $261 million.
These are real numbers that represent real money flowing to players who previously had no mechanism to share in tournament profits. The 50-50 formula has worked mechanically as designed.
The data rights story is equally significant, though far less discussed. Tennis Data Innovations — the entity created to centralise and exploit ATP data rights — went to market properly for the first time under OneVision, running a competitive request-for-proposals process rather than doing bilateral deals in the old way. The result, by Gaudenzi’s own account, was nearly double the net distribution to tournaments and players compared to previous arrangements. Most of the financial headroom that funded the prize money increases came from this data revenue uplift, not from new broadcast deals or sponsorship growth.
That is an important and under-reported story. The ATP found a significant new revenue stream not by growing its audience or signing a transformative media deal, but by properly commercialising an asset it already owned.
Where Phase One Fell Short
The honest assessment requires acknowledging what Phase One did not change.
The prize money cliff between the top of the tour and the middle remains steep. The Baseline programme — which guarantees minimum income floors for players ranked inside the top 250 — is a genuine welfare improvement. But a guaranteed floor of $75,000 for players ranked 176-250 in 2024, before annual expenses of $90,000 to $150,000, still leaves most professional players running at a structural loss. Phase One made the economics better at the top and marginally better in the middle. It did not change the fundamental model.
The Masters 1000 expansion to twelve days has also produced mixed results. The intention was to increase commercial inventory and broadcast hours at premium events. The unintended consequence has been player welfare complaints — a longer calendar with more days on court at the biggest events, without a corresponding reduction in the overall schedule. Several prominent players, including Novak Djokovic, have been vocal about calendar congestion. The ATP has acknowledged the tension but has not resolved it.
Most significantly, Phase One’s commercial ambitions around media rights have not yet fully materialised. The aggregation of rights into ATP Media was the right structural move. But the fragmented global broadcast landscape for tennis — multiple platforms, regional deals, no unified global home for the sport — remains largely unchanged. Tennis Channel in the US, Sky Sports in the UK, beIN Sports in the Middle East, various domestic broadcasters across Asia. The infrastructure for a better deal is in place. The deal itself has not happened yet.
The Data Rights Model as a Blueprint
The Tennis Data Innovations story deserves more attention than it gets, because it illustrates something important about where tennis’s commercial upside actually lies.
The ATP had data rights — betting data, match statistics, real-time analytics — that were being monetised through fragmented bilateral agreements. By creating a dedicated entity, running a proper competitive process, and going to market with a unified package, they nearly doubled the revenue from an asset that already existed. No new audience. No new product. Just better commercial execution on something they already owned.
The same logic applies to media rights, sponsorship, and digital content. Tennis has significant latent commercial value that is being systematically undermonetised because of fragmentation and poor deal-making infrastructure. OneVision Phase One built some of the tools to address this. The returns from data rights suggest the approach is right. The question is whether Phase Two can apply the same logic at the scale that actually matters — unified media rights across the ATP, WTA, and Grand Slams.
What Phase One Tells Us About Phase Two
Phase One was, in Gaudenzi’s own framing, about getting the ATP’s house in order. By that measure, it succeeded. The governance is cleaner, the financial transparency is real, the data rights are better monetised, and players have a genuine mechanism to share in tournament profits for the first time.
But Phase One was also the easy part. Everything in Phase One happened within the ATP’s own governance structure — changes the ATP Board could vote on and implement without requiring agreement from the WTA, the Grand Slams, or the ITF.
Phase Two requires all of them to agree on a unified governance structure. That is a fundamentally different challenge, and the resistance is structural rather than personal. Each of the four Grand Slams is an independent entity with its own revenue model, its own media rights deals, and its own institutional interests. The WTA has its own governance challenges. The ITF sits above both tours in the sport’s nominal hierarchy while having less commercial power than either.
OneVision Phase One proved the ATP can reform itself when it controls the process. Phase Two will prove whether tennis can reform as a sport.
That verdict is still out.
Read Part Two → OneVision Phase Two Is the Hard Part. Here’s Why.
Tim Lee is the founder of Baseplay Tennis and head coach at Baseplay Tennis Academy in Singapore.
