00:00The U.S. Open brought a new wave of fans to tennis and new commercial opportunities for its stars.
00:06Winner's Alliance pulls players' rights, helping athletes unlock deals that they might not be able to land on their own.
00:12Ahmed Nassar, the CEO of Winner's Alliance, joins us now after, I'm sure, which was a victorious run weeks ago
00:17for the U.S. Open.
00:19Ahmed, great to see you. And look, I have to say, I have a feeling a lot of our viewers,
00:22which I'm assuming are avid tennis fans or players, probably don't know much about Winner's Alliance
00:27because it's a relatively new concept in tennis. What is exactly its purpose and why was it needed?
00:33Well, first, thank you for having me. Good morning. And sorry, I'm not sitting right next to you in studio.
00:39We started Winner's Alliance four and a half years ago to bring into not only tennis, but other global sports,
00:46opportunities that we sort of take for granted in U.S. sports like the NBA and the NFL and the
00:53MLB,
00:54trading cards, video games, apparel deals that have really lots of athletes in them.
01:02You know, and I'm talking 50, 100 plus and sometimes thousands plus.
01:06And really what was missing is an engine to aggregate those intellectual property rights,
01:11those name, image and likeness rights, and then offer them in a scalable way to the companies that make those
01:16products,
01:17which then in turn offer them to the fans.
01:18And it's a way for these players to make money, Ahmad. And I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up
01:23what long has been sort of the issue with tennis, that these individual tours make so much money,
01:29but the players themselves, especially if they are not in the top, do not make a lot of money.
01:34Winner's Alliance, kind of the commercial arm of the Professional Tennis Players Association,
01:39which you once led as well. And what thrust them into the spotlight was a lawsuit against the tours,
01:44alleging some, you know, mistreatment of these players, not enough money, too long hours.
01:48Where does that lawsuit currently stand? Have these tours made any differences since this was first brought up?
01:56Well, I think tennis has kind of thrived on incremental improvements over the years.
02:02And what's really needed is wholesale reform. And that lawsuit, the antitrust lawsuit, is against both tours,
02:10the men's tour and the women's tour, but also all four of the Grand Slams, including the U.S. Open.
02:15Already one of those Grand Slams, the Australian Open, has settled earlier this year
02:19because they acknowledge that the sport does need wholesale reform.
02:23And that kind of lawsuit is patterned on exactly what we've seen in other sports.
02:27Most recently, NASCAR, college sports before that, and even the NBA and the NFL decades ago
02:33had to do this sort of thing to be able to bring the changes that have actually unlocked
02:38enormous value for the sport, owners, fans, consumer partners alike, over the decades.
02:44Well, there has a lot been this idea that maybe you'll get some more consolidation in tennis.
02:49I know there were talks about ATP and WTA combining. That so far hasn't happened.
02:54CVC, a private equity firm, comes into the WTA.
02:57Ahmad, is part of the solution just to make tennis less fragmented?
03:02Yeah, I think that is one of the key parts of the solution, is you've got to have less fragmentation.
03:07But you have to bring the players in in a realistic way and have a proper voice that is independent
03:14representing the players. And again, this is not a novel solution.
03:17This is exactly what we see in these other sports that have thrived over the decades and last few years.
03:23It's always difficult, though, to unite these various athletes and what they want.
03:30And I think, you know, the PTPA and Winners Alliance certainly has faced some of that.
03:34Novak Djokovic was, of course, a co-founder of the PTPA, and he pulled out earlier this year
03:38one of the most recognizable faces. There were internal lawsuits, including against yourself
03:43and Winners Alliance, that have since been dropped. But I just wonder, Ahmed, is there some
03:47fracturing even within these organizations that are supposed to represent the players?
03:51And how do you deal with that fracturing?
03:54Yeah, so I think any reform movement is going to generate pushback from the people who are
04:00threatened by that reform. I think the players have been remarkably united in terms of the things
04:05that they're looking to change, right? So they don't like the schedule, the wear and tear,
04:09the grind on them. They don't like the compensation structure. They don't like the anti-doping protocols
04:14and the testing and the all hours of the night and all hours of the morning showing up from these
04:19people who are, you know, there to test them. And why is their system so drastically different than
04:27what we see work successfully in other sports? So I think the things that matter are remarkably
04:34consistent, right? The same complaints that you heard five years ago last year are the same as this
04:39year. And that is what the focus has to be on. You know, the personalities involved, you know,
04:45I think that's a distraction tactic that people who don't want to have to do the hard work of
04:50reforming create. And I think we've seen that just like every sport has seen that in every
04:54political movement, every reform movement across human history has had to face some sort of version
05:00of that pushback.
05:01Does it hurt not to have the all-time great, the GOAT, Djokovic, part of the PTPA anymore,
05:07Ahmed? I mean, he's such a visible figure. And the lawsuit, part of the reason it got a lot of
05:11attention is because it was in part led by him.
05:14Yeah, look, I think we, I flipped that around. He is the greatest tennis player of all time. We
05:20were lucky to have him. We were lucky that he founded the organization when he did. Players of his
05:25stature don't have to do that whatsoever. Players at that stage of their career, especially coming
05:31out of COVID, would be, you know, it's the easiest thing in the world to just focus on
05:37their own careers. So I think the tennis players as a group, we're lucky to have him as a change
05:45agent. And he still is a change agent, right? Whether or not he's affiliated with this group
05:50or that group, it doesn't really matter because at the core, what all of us who have ever been part
05:56of this are trying to do, and I'm no longer part of the PTPA formally either, is that we are
06:02trying
06:02to push for reform in the sport in a way that benefits not only the players, but also the fans
06:08and the actual, the tournaments and the tours themselves, ironically.
06:12This is a type of thing that you know very well, not just in tennis. Previously, you also served as
06:18the president of the NFL Players Association. So you've done a lot of work advocating and trying to
06:23bring money to individual players. One of the big things that's changed in the business of sports
06:28is just how institutionalized it has become. Private equity has wholesale come into this,
06:33whether it be the most recent sale of the Lakers, whether it be reports of Apollo coming into the
06:38Yankees. And I wonder what difference that makes for the players themselves. Is this a helpful
06:44or a hurtful trend?
06:46I think it can be helpful and it should be helpful if done properly, like a lot of tools and
06:51new tools,
06:52whether it's AI or anything else. It depends on whose hands it's in and how it's wielded.
06:58But I think the fact that the world, frankly, is now catching on to the fact that sports are not
07:03just these games that we watch in our spare time, but that they're entirely an asset class that are
07:08worthy of investment and have been under invested for decades is, it should be a good thing. And I think
07:15within that, you think the logos of the teams that you've mentioned and others and the stadiums that
07:21they play in have so far generated most of the attention, but in reality, the athletes and the
07:26locker rooms that they populate have been largely ignored. And I think that's something we're trying
07:31to change. And that's something we're trying to fix because the athletes really generate the value.
07:36And that is why people show up, whether they're watching in person or on TV.
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