LTA matrix for funding

paulisi · Tennis legend

LTA matrix for funding

Bruce · Lower Club Player

The LTA's "second tier" of funding for any player not already on a player contact is the tournament bonus scheme.
www.lta.org.uk/players-parents/Performance-players/Player-funding/Bonus-Scheme/

-- Edited by Bruce on Saturday 19th of October 2013 10:59:21 AM

paulisi · Tennis legend

I was thinking more of encouraging players to travel, by giving a percentage of travel costs for a fixed amount of overseas events.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

www.independent.co.uk/sport/tennis/british-players-must-stand-on-own-feet-as-lta-cuts-handouts-8930240.html

this article gives a few more figures that I hadn't seen before

Bob in Spain · Tennis legend

How much do you think a typical futures (and occasional Challenger) player would spend per year on overseas travel and accommodation (not including food etc - just flights/trains and hotels)

I am going to guess at about 10k - 15k per year.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

baxi2 wrote:
Bob In Spain wrote:-
"How much do you think a typical futures (and occasional Challenger) player would spend per year on overseas travel and accommodation (not including food etc - just flights/trains and hotels)

I am going to guess at about 10k - 15k per year."

I'd say 10k - 15k was low end and realistically you could reckon nearer 25k. For those players lucky or wealthy enough to travel with a coach you would double the figure then add his salary so a minimum of 25k expenses (not including food) and maybe minimum 30k for "budget"coach salary. Total 80k !!!!

I think Bob is far nearer the mark, maybe even high.

If you play 10 tournaments in Europe, just taking travel and hotels (coz as you say, you've got to pay for food whatever) then GBP 300 for the travel and GBP 50 per night (sharing) for the hotel would be about right.

If you stay on average 4 nights when you do full the travel, that's GBP 500 per tournament. If you stay the full seven nights but then play three tournaments in the same place i.e. no extra travel, that's GBP 1350 for three tournaments (300 travel and 21 nights (max)).

Even if you put the hotel or travel up a bit, or played 15 tournaments abroad, there's NO way I get to 25 k - how did you calculate that baxi?

And Bob wasn't talking about coaches because practically no regular futures player travels with a coach that they pay for (groups of national federation players will often have a federation coach but they're not paying for him/her) - I've never seen a regular player travel with a coach.

-- Edited by Coup Droit on Thursday 21st of November 2013 09:01:56 AM

Salmon · Tennis legend

Do you NEED to travel out of Europe, honestly? The Challenger qualies in Asia this autumn/winter have probably been stronger than the ones in Europe. Of course... you can learn a lot more about the pro life if you move out of your comfort zone (blah, blah) but someone who is struggling to make ends meet can probably do without travelling to Asia for a few Challengers.

I've been thinking about the level at which a singles player (not necessarily British) breaks even. £15K (without food) seems reasonable for 25 tournaments in a year, but I'd like to see the estimates on a) equipment cost b) medical bills. I suppose there's nothing I'm missing out on?

Edit: Cheers, PaulM!

-- Edited by Salmon on Thursday 21st of November 2013 09:57:59 AM

Spectator · All-time great

Looking at the Jan/Feb calendar (as that's all that's currently available), if you were a Futures player and were willing to travel for a month at a time without returning home (which many may not be for various and good reasons), if you started your year in Germany, the first two Futures are within ten miles of each other, and the next two, while requiring you to go north and then south, are all on one of the main train lines. German advance fares are quite reasonable, so assuming you scheduled it as a block and didn't try to come home in between, you could probably do at least some of the fares very cheaply. The return to London if you arrived the day before the block began and left the day after it finished would be 160 euros, and the internal fares could be as low as 30 euros. And there's no excess baggage, because trains don't have limits. Looking on a travel website, 13 nights in a hotel located very near one of the futures and not far from the other, if people were sharing, would come to £380 each (special deal); a hotel for six nights in the next would be about £280; and a hotel in Nussloch at about £210 for seven nights. There would be some travel to and from the site, but you're talking roughly £1100 for a month + food, some local travel, stringing, etc. If, of course, you had friends who could put you up, that figure would drop.

The difficulty would appear to surround making the jump up to Challengers and ATP qualies. There are very few places where you could do a good run of Challengers without boarding a plane ... and very few where you could mix Challengers, ATP qualies and the odd dip down to 15K+ futures very easily. The exception to the rule seems to be Croatia, which puts an ATP followed by two 15K + H futures in Zagreb. Other than that, even France, which has a run of ATP tournaments and Challengers in February, puts the ATP tournaments in the South (Montpellier/Marseille) and the Challengers in the North (Quimper/Cherbourg). Each of these is do-able as a sequence, but the northern and southern tournaments alternate weeks, so you either do a week-on, week-off, or you have quite a lot of travel. (There are futures as well, but they're not much help in terms of scheduling).

-- Edited by Spectator on Thursday 21st of November 2013 11:10:06 AM

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Wow, brilliant research Spectator. There's a job as tennis player booking agent job waiting !

But good to see that, yes, travel and hotels need not be very expensive at all - it's not really the make-or-break thing.

-- Edited by Coup Droit on Thursday 21st of November 2013 11:13:28 AM

LouieG · County player

Which GB players are under player contracts?

indiana · Tennis legend

It's a secret !

baxi2 · Lower Club Player

Bob In Spain wrote:-

"How much do you think a typical futures (and occasional Challenger) player would spend per year on overseas travel and accommodation (not including food etc - just flights/trains and hotels)

I am going to guess at about 10k - 15k per year."

I'd say 10k - 15k was low end and realistically you could reckon nearer 25k. For those players lucky or wealthy enough to travel with a coach you would double the figure then add his salary so a minimum of 25k expenses (not including food) and maybe minimum 30k for "budget"coach salary. Total 80k !!!!

PaulM · Tennis legend

Id say about 10-15k on travel sounds about right. More if you go outside Europe. 25k plus is more likely thw total cost for a player I think (including food, stringing, physio, rackets, clothes, entry fees, coaching when in the UK.

Most players full schedule would be between 25 and 30 events. So 15 foreign tournaments is probably about right, although playong in the UK can be vwry expensive too. you cant book flights far in advance as you dont know how well you are going to do or what your schedule will be for months ahead, so 300return flights is quite low (especially as you have to pay large excess baggage fees and may well end up trying to change your return flight). Plus most events are not in easy reach of a popular airport so there may be multiple flights, trains, coaches, car hire to pay for. Few are in blocks other than Sharm/Antalya so assuming staying in the same place for several weeks a couple of times a season probably isnt realistic.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

PaulM wrote:
Id say about 10-15k on travel sounds about right. More if you go outside Europe. 25k plus is more likely thw total cost for a player I think (including food, stringing, physio, rackets, clothes, entry fees, coaching when in the UK.

Most players full schedule would be between 25 and 30 events. So 15 foreign tournaments is probably about right, although playong in the UK can be vwry expensive too. you cant book flights far in advance as you dont know how well you are going to do or what your schedule will be for months ahead, so 300return flights is quite low (especially as you have to pay large excess baggage fees and may well end up trying to change your return flight). Plus most events are not in easy reach of a popular airport so there may be multiple flights, trains, coaches, car hire to pay for. Few are in blocks other than Sharm/Antalya so assuming staying in the same place for several weeks a couple of times a season probably isnt realistic.

You might be right about 300 being a bit low for travel - I wondered that - although there are some where it'll be fine or even a touch high.

Most of the players tweet that they are highly skilled at hitting the baggage allowance to the microgramme - there's a bit of one-upmanship about it I think so I don't think that comes into it much.

And most also plan a tour - either ones in the same actual venue or several quite close i.e. in Spain or Greece, and then often hire a car and get a group of four packed in which works out pretty cheap. Very few hop over and back just for one tournament. And obviously stringing and clothes and whatever will be costs that they have in training anyway so I think that Bob was only talking about the incremental costs.

Of course, some people like Dan Evans managed to play for a whole twelve months without even stepping outside the UK (bar once - to Ireland!).

kundalini · Specialist Reporter + Intermediate Club Player

Bob in Spain wrote:
How much do you think a typical futures (and occasional Challenger) player would spend per year on overseas travel and accommodation (not including food etc - just flights/trains and hotels)

I am going to guess at about 10k - 15k per year.

If you click on the various names on Steven's top 25 table and look at their schedules for this year, there's plenty of futures level brits who will be well under £10K as they've only done 3 or 4 overseas trips, typically perhaps 3 events at a time. Then you've got the players who don't turn up for every GB futures event, opting to play abroad most weeks and often flying out for one tournament; that's inevitably going to be a far more expensive approach which may well cost in excess of £15K.