LTA Tournament Bonus Scheme

Lambda · Challenger level

LTA Tournament Bonus Scheme

Elegant Point · Satellite level

Thats a shame hmm . Allegedly there are male Brit players in the top 500 who just about broke even this year thanks to the Tournament Bonus scheme. 2023 will be tough for some, especially those without wealthy parents.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

This surely must be linked to the atp and wta fines on the lta for their banning of Russian players from British events?

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

JonH comes home wrote:
This surely must be linked to the atp and wta fines on the lta for their banning of Russian players from British events?

No, I think it's more connected to the large number of tournaments that they're now putting on in the UK.

The argument for the scheme previously was to help the players who had to travel a lot and use other countries' hospitality, effectively.

Now that covid has passed (sort of), and that the UK has a generous domestic schedule, there's obviously less need, as such, for the top-up.

JonH comes home · Tennis legend

Coup Droit wrote:
JonH comes home wrote:
This surely must be linked to the atp and wta fines on the lta for their banning of Russian players from British events?
No, I think it's more connected to the large number of tournaments that they're now putting on in the UK.
The argument for the scheme previously was to help the players who had to travel a lot and use other countries' hospitality, effectively.
Now that covid has passed (sort of), and that the UK has a generous domestic schedule, there's obviously less need, as such, for the top-up.

Ok, that makes sense.

Mark1968 · Intermediate Club Player

JonH comes home wrote:
This surely must be linked to the atp and wta fines on the lta for their banning of Russian players from British events?

You are absolutely right regardless of what anybody else says. The scrapping of Wimbledon in 2020 becauase of the cold, after Convid restrictions were lifted (incidently the only Grand Slam event to buckle and not go ahead) cost the LTA a multi million £ fortune. Then they were fined heavily for the appalling decision to ban players who were born in countries the LTA board does not like, hence this funding cut.
I said on here in July that this would cost our players, not only did the likes of Peniston and Gray miss out on vital ranking points that would have seen them seeded higher at events they entered, and in Gray's case would have made him eligable for more challengers, and now we have this!
I know there are more futures events now, but the LTA need to get back to basics, stop discriminating against players for events that have nothing to do with them, (no other Grand Slam banned them so remember that), stop playing politics, and get on with the tennis.

Coup Droit · Tennis legend

Mark1968 wrote:
JonH comes home wrote:
This surely must be linked to the atp and wta fines on the lta for their banning of Russian players from British events?
You are absolutely right regardless of what anybody else says. The scrapping of Wimbledon in 2020 becauase of the cold, after Convid restrictions were lifted (incidently the only Grand Slam event to buckle and not go ahead) cost the LTA a multi million £ fortune. Then they were fined heavily for the appalling decision to ban players who were born in countries the LTA board does not like, hence this funding cut.
I said on here in July that this would cost our players, not only did the likes of Peniston and Gray miss out on vital ranking points that would have seen them seeded higher at events they entered, and in Gray's case would have made him eligable for more challengers, and now we have this!
I know there are more futures events now, but the LTA need to get back to basics, stop discriminating against players for events that have nothing to do with them, (no other Grand Slam banned them so remember that), stop playing politics, and get on with the tennis.

By 'cold', do you mean Covid? In which case I might stop reading there

However, carrying on, I think the claim that the cancelled event in 2020 cost the LTA a 'multi-million £ fortune' is misleading and suggests you might need to look at the annual report more closely.

From the annual report figures, the LTA has a surplus from the Championships in 2020 of £36 million, approx. And in 2021 a surplus of £39 approx.

I don't consider £3m to be a multi-million fortune (and that's always assuming that the event would have made £39m in 2020 if staged)

Indeed, the inusrance is still paying out - the report says: "

The increase in the distributable surplus in 2021 was partly due to the receipt of the LTAs share (£6m) of the final insurance payout"

So, if you added that £6m back to 2020, where it belongs, so to speak, then the LTA actually made a big profit in 2020 from Wimbledon

So the cancellation MADE them money, it did not COST them money (thanks to savvy insurance)

https://www.lta.org.uk/49bc70/siteassets/about-lta/file/lta-finance-and-governance-report-2021.pdf

-- Edited by Coup Droit on Wednesday 28th of December 2022 11:39:42 AM

indiana · Tennis legend

Thanks for putting down some figures to this, CD.

With the extent of the pandemic and the insurance Wimbledon had in place, to my mind it always made perfect sense for them to cancel the 2020 event and take the insurance payout.

Clearly any event they had tried to put on would have been very much restricted, giving them much less revenue than normal, so it is logical that they would end up net much better off cancelling as compared to holding such a restricted event at the scheduled time ( when the whole tennis tour had shut down ) or perhaps a month or two later.

As I have said before, I did think the unilateral banning of Russians and Belarusians was appallingly handled and has come home to reap in the fines on that score. But clearly overall the sensible covid cancellation and insurance payout has hugely helped mitigate that and leave overall finances evidently not that bad at all. Point made, assuming they continue to get no back up from other countries and federations, let's hope the LTA and Wimbledon ( and their government masters? ) show further sense by now allowing individual Russian and Belarusian players into UK events.