The lawsuit that could change the game of tennis

There’s a HEAVY slate of March Madness games on the docket today (mostly on the men’s side). So get mentally prepared to switch tabs when the boss walks by, keep streaming windows open on Zoom calls, or, for the smart ones that called in sick, devour a plate of nachos and enjoy an immersive experience that involves moving every TV in the house into the living room.

See today’s schedule and how to watch each game here: Men’s | Women’s.

––Peter & Kyle
On the clock: Today’s newsletter takes ~4.28 minutes to read (1,138 words).

🎾 Tennis

The lawsuit that could change the game of tennis

There’s drama in the tennis world, which could be in the midst of an upheaval. And both have nothing to do with pickleball or Zendaya.

The Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA), a group co-founded by Novak Djokovic and Vasek Pospisil and financially backed by private-equity billionaire Bill Ackman, sued a group of the sport’s governing bodies this week over working conditions.

The lawsuit––which also names 12 pro players as plaintiffs and has the support of hundreds of players on the tour, including many of the men’s and women’s top 20, per the PTPA––claims athletes are “stuck in a rigged game,” alleging that the bodies operate like a “cartel” and engage in monopolistic practices that put players’ financial and physical health at risk.

Some grievances aired in the 163-page suit include allegations of:

• Mandatory participation rules, longer tournaments, and inconsistent scheduling, which make some pros play at all hours of the night.
• Tournaments changing the type of balls they use, which the suit alleges can lead to more injuries.
• Smaller prize payouts than other major sports (tennis players earn 12%-20% of the Grand Slams and 25%-40% of the ATP and WTA Tours; for context: NBA, NHL, and MLB players receive ~50% of their sports’ revenues; NFL players get ~35%). The governing bodies’ also allegedly have a strong clasp on players’ image rights that prevents the athletes from making money with sponsorships.

The push for a seat at the table

Tennis players are classified as independent contractors, with no formally recognized union. Though the organizations that run tennis have been speaking with the PTPA on-and-off since its founding in 2019, there’s no collective bargaining agreement in place like in other sports.

Things are rough at the country club. Golf also experienced a game-changing push three years ago, when the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV league pursued top PGA players with a Brinks trunk in tow 🤑.

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📰 Catch Up Quick

Headlines de la semaine

Japan loves baseball. The LA Dodgers beat the Chicago Cubs 6-3 at the Tokyo Dome early Wednesday morning, completing a 2-0 series sweep to start the MLB regular season. The game featured a heavy dose of Japan-grown talent, with Shohei Ohtani smashing his first HR of 2025 and new Dodgers starter Rōki Sasaki tossing three strong innings. And fans showed out to witness the spectacle: The cheapest ticket for Tuesday’s Dodger-Cubs matchup stood at ~$3.5k, higher than the get-in price of this year's Super Bowl in New Orleans. Also: 25M+ Japanese residents – about one-fifth of the entire country – tuned in to watch Tuesday’s game, larger than any US baseball audience since Game 7 of the 2017 World Series.

EA Sports is boosting College Football payouts. The video game giant has reportedly agreed to pay players $1,500 apiece for their names, images, and likenesses to appear in the next EA Sports College Football, up from $600/player last year. Athletes are still negotiating for the possibility of royalties from the new game, which is slated to release this summer. EA Sports College Football 25––the company’s first CFB video game in over a decade––was the #2 best-selling game of 2024 (sports or otherwise).

The $13.5M showdown is set. The Atlanta Drive, led by Justin Thomas, will face off against the Xander Schauffle-led New York Golf Club to decide the TGL's inaugural championship. Whoever wins the best-of-three match, spread across Monday and Tuesday nights, will earn $9M, while the loser walks away with $4.5M. Notably absent from the playoffs: teams led by TGL co-creators Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods, who both finished at the bottom of the standings.

Following the Money

How March Madness Payouts Work

While earning an NCAA tournament bid comes at a cost, it also comes with a bag attached.

But it hasn’t always been that way. This year marks the first time in history that the NCAA will be making payouts to conferences of the participants in the women’s March Madness tournament, in a format mirroring what’s been in place on the men’s side since 1991.

The dollar funnel

Money filters down to conferences, then to their member schools, from the NCAA’s media rights deals for the tourney. The men will receive 24% of their ~$1.1B/year media rights deal in 2025, while the women get 26% of a new deal with ESPN that pays ~$65M/year.

• Payouts are broken down into units; one for each team in each game it plays, working out to 132 total.
• Women’s units this year are worth ~$114k, while men’s units are worth ~$2M.

No wonder ADs get bonuses. UNC athletic director and March Madness selection committee chair Bubba Cunningham will receive a ~$68k bonus for his school’s just-under-the-wire bid this year––a fact that contributed heavily to a recently launched investigation into the men's March Madness selection criteria.

Zoom out: If the NCAA was Yoda, March Madness is Chewbacca carrying it around. The organization that’s slowly losing its relevance to the Power 5 Empire derives ~80% of its annual revenue from the tournament.

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💬 Overheard

We've never seen that happen before."

It’s not uncommon for sports teams to get bit by the injury bug mid-season. But when it comes to the Dallas Mavericks, that lil’ injury bug has morphed into a monster that would make Agents J and K quake in their MIB-issued boots.

The sitch: The NBA requires eight players to be active for every game. If a team can't suit up eight players, they have to forfeit the game––something the Mavs may have to start doing as early as Monday due to a rash of injuries suffered since trading Luka Dončić to the Lakers in early February, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks.

• The team currently has just eight healthy players out of 17 roster spots––and two such players, Kessler Edwards and Brandon Williams, are on two-way contracts, meaning they can’t exceed 50 NBA games.
• Edwards is expected to hit his 50-game threshold in tomorrow’s contest, while Williams only has four more games left.
• Signing players is also out of the question because the team is right up against the hard salary cap (first apron).

One potential out: NBA teams have gotten around possible forfeits in the past by suiting up an injured player or two, then having them get "re-injured" during the game.

📰 What Else is Happening

• The F1 Chinese Grand Prix takes place this weekend. See a preview + storylines.
• The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is voting to elect a new president today for the first time since 2013.
• Cam Skattebo and Arizona State are being sued for $300k over an alleged golf cart-related injury.
• The San Francisco Giants sold 10% of the franchise to a private equity firm; the funds will be used to upgrade the team's facilities and 25-year-old stadium, as well as power a real estate development adjacent to the ballpark.
• The Open Cup, the oldest ongoing soccer competition in the US, doubled its prize money to $1M in a bid to boost interest.

🌐 Web Gems

Cool things to click

📈 Up and to the right: The big momentum behind new women’s pro sports venues.

🧠✍️ ICYMI: On Tuesday we covered how to best pick upsets in March Madness, according to data. Potentially helpful for filling out a last-minute bracket.

📜 Open the vault: And explore the US and Japan’s 150-year baseball-driven relationship.

🤔 Interesting: How NFL teams are essentially using Klarna to pay for players.

📖 Read: The untold story of Gregg Popovich and the fight of his life.

🤔 Trivia

🏀 Two-title talk

New York University’s men’s and women’s basketball teams each play in the 2025 NCAA Division III Final Four today, with a shot to become the first school to win both national titles at that level in the same year.

Can you name the only D1 school in history to pull off this feat?

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🤔 Answer

UConn, who did it twice (more two-title talk)––once in 2004, and again in 2014.