John Butler

spotify.link/2nPrqYh8aJb Thank you Breaking Back, for hardcore tennis heads. We got granular on Professional Tennis League, sex appeal, billionaires, tennis takeovers, grass roots & more. Tennis is sooo ripe. @normarcher @CraigTiley @atptour @WTA @ptpaplayers @PIF_en @BillAckman

Baseline didn’t make sense to me. When the announcement came out, the guaranteed dollars for each ranking threshold had already been surpassed, and the season was far from over. Guaranteeing $300k to players finishing top-100 sounds nice (aside from 100th highest paid athlete in other sports netting millions). But #100 made almost $700k the previous year, so a $300k guarantee isn’t exactly diving headfirst into the trenches with your troops. Good PR move tho. Got a lot of thumbs up responses. If I misunderstood the program, happy to hear some clarity. And would enjoy learning what the fine print was.

A new thought…A highly produced and investable combined tier 1 of the sport with a goal of driving revenues that can fund player development. Here’s the “At a glance” of the plan… The most successful sports leagues own their player pipelines, they take it upon themselves to get the most out of their athletes. Ratios of coaches to players in these sports ranging from 1:2 to 1:6 or more… Tennis ratios are backwards, 4:1, 6:1…OK if you’re a top player and can fund that but not possible for the majority of players… What if professional tennis could afford to offer this to its rising athletes via regionally based training centers where the sport can take advantage of scale and provide 1:4 type ratio coaching, including tennis, physical, mental, nutritional, etc.? This is the core of Professional Tennis League, a concept tour. Much more to the program and happy to share… I believe a progressive packaging and promotion of the sport’s tier 1 product can drive exponentially greater returns than currently modeled (and projected) and reinvested in ways to position tennis at the top of the sports marketplace… Let’s make sure we don’t leave any Carlos Alcaraz and Coco Gauff level players and personalities stranded on the roadside because they ran out of gas financially and physically.