Closed leagues and open questions: what an antitrust tennis complaint could mean for rugby

On 16 March 2025, the Professional Tennis Players Association (“PTPA”), co-founded by Novak Djokovic, launched a coordinated series of antitrust complaints in the EU, UK and US against the Association of Tennis Professionals (“ATP”), the Women’s Tennis Association (“WTA”), the International Tennis Federation (“ITF”) and the International Tennis Integrity Agency (“ITIA”) (together, the “Tennis Agencies”). The complaints allege that these bodies operate as a cartel: suppressing competition between tournament organisers, restricting player autonomy, and artificially depressing player earnings.

The European Commission is reportedly examining whether the Tennis Agencies’ dual role, acting both as regulators of the sport and as commercial operators within it, amounts to an abuse of dominance under Article 102 TFEU and/or anticompetitive coordination contrary to Article 101 TFEU. These concerns are not novel. They closely resemble the structural issues scrutinised in the recent European Super League judgment, where the concentration of regulatory and commercial power in football’s governing bodies, coupled with opaque and discretionary decision-making, was found to raise serious competition-law concerns.

In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority is understood to be considering parallel issues, particularly allegations that tournament structures restrict players’ commercial freedom. In the United States, the PTPA has also brought federal antitrust proceedings, alleging that the current governance model suppresses competition for athlete services and imposes exclusionary restraints on players and agents alike.

Although these proceedings arise in professional tennis, their implications extend well beyond that sport. Professional rugby, in particular, should be paying close attention.

At the core of the tennis litigation lies the problem of dual governance: organisations such as the ATP and WTA regulate the sport while simultaneously profiting from the commercial ecosystem they control. The same structural tension is evident in rugby. Bodies such as World Rugby and Premiership Rugby exercise regulatory authority over scheduling, player eligibility, salary caps and competition access, while also controlling broadcasting arrangements, sponsorship structures and prize revenues.

This creates several potential competition-law flashpoints:

• First, there is the question whether rugby’s governing bodies risk allegations of abusing a dominant position by using regulatory powers in ways that distort market access, entrench incumbent advantages, or limit commercial opportunity for clubs and players.

• Secondly, salary cap regimes warrant closer scrutiny. While caps may be justified as tools of financial sustainability, they may become legally vulnerable if they impose restrictive conditions without delivering their stated objective. Where wage restraints suppress player earnings without producing financially viable clubs, they may be characterised as disproportionate restraints on competition.

• Thirdly, revenue distribution models may also invite challenge if they operate in practice to disadvantage clubs seeking entry into the Premiership, reinforce barriers to expansion, or shield established participants from competitive pressure.

  
  

These concerns are sharpened by rugby union’s present financial fragility. In England, several professional clubs have entered administration in recent years. Players face wage suppression under domestic salary cap rules, while the contraction of the Premiership from its historic peak of 14 clubs to just 10 has reduced employment opportunities and increased clubs’ monopsony power in the labour market. At the same time, rugby lacks a player representative body with the independent legal and economic leverage of the PTPA in tennis or FIFPRO in football, leaving players comparatively exposed.

The PTPA’s multi-jurisdictional strategy may therefore offer a template for athletes in other sports where legacy governance structures are increasingly difficult to justify. Rugby players, collectively or individually, may in time consider:

• challenging salary cap mechanisms;

• scrutinising restrictions on international eligibility; and

• building a genuinely independent representative body capable of asserting players’ economic interests.

  
  

The PTPA litigation is ultimately about more than tennis. It is a challenge to the governance architecture of modern professional sport itself. For rugby, the risks of inaction are substantial: mounting financial instability, deteriorating trust between players and governing bodies, and increasing exposure to legal challenge.

As tennis begins to test these issues in court, rugby may soon face the same reckoning. The question is whether its institutions will reform voluntarily, or whether competition law will compel them to do so.