Tour Road Map to Include Tougher Fines, Suspensions, Shorter Schedule

Sony Ericsson WTA Tour President Stacey Allaster discussed in an interview at the Rogers Cup on Tuesday more details about the Tour’s new Road Map plan.

A shorter schedule, larger withdrawal fines, and a suspension policy are among the changes expected to be implemented in the 2009 Sony Ericsson WTA Tour tennis season.

While the Tour will make many changes next year, Allaster mentioned six facets of the restructured WTA Tour.

STACEY ALLASTER: “The first one comes with the calendar. We used to have 26 events. You could hear the players. There’s too many events. I can’t play them all. We’ll be coming down to 20 premiere events for which the Rogers Cup is one.

The second lever is the commitment system. We had a system that could never deliver. We had 26 events that we had to deliver commitment to. There’s only 10 top players. All 26 events wanted the same top 10 players. Guess what? System didn’t work.”

EUGENE LAPIERRE: “I remember saying we needed 20 top 10 players.”

STACEY ALLASTER: “We’re going to get there one day, but right now ten is the driver in the business. We now will only have 14 events that the tour has to commitment to for player commitment. We went from 26 to 14. That’s going to have a dramatic impact on our ability to deliver to Coupe Rogers.

The other levers are ranking points. That’s one of the key drivers for the athletes because it’s their ranking which will affect their endorsements, which will affect their Grand Slam seeding. So it’s an important part of the equation when the player is making her decision on where to play.

We’ve added more ranking points for the Rogers Cup. And if players don’t play the Rogers Cup, if they’re committed, they’ll get a zero pointer for whatever reason. She cannot replace that zero pointer in her ranking.

We also realized that today’s athlete, the way these women now hit the ball, they can’t play 13 tour events. That’s what we asked of them. They can’t do it. They’re playing about 10. Maria Sharapova, if you look at her data, the last several years, plays 10 tour events on average, the four Grand Slams, possibly Fed Cup and Olympics. That’s what today’s modern player plays. So we’ve also recalibrated the commitment system so that we know that the athletes can meet their obligations.

Last but not least come the rewards and the penalties. On-site prize money is going up by almost 40%. The bonus pool, we have a $5 million bonus pool. What’s the significance of that? In the past, the bonus pool was shared by 50 players. When you try and distribute $5 million to 50 players, there’s not that much money left to really change the behavior of the athletes to play the top events. Now this $5 million bonus pool will only be available to the top 10. So it starts to have a little bit more meaning financially for our top level events.

Last but not least come the penalties. The players said, We want a longer off-season. We can’t commit to as many events. Put the best events, like the Rogers Cup, in the right dates. So we’ve done all of that. We’ve given them breaks. And now we’re saying, there’s going to be a little less flexibility on where you play. And if you don’t play, then there’s going to be really significant ramifications.

They’ll lose their bonus pool, the entire amount of their bonus pool. Now it’s 300, 400 thousand dollars. That’s starting to mean something. Fines have dramatically been increased. I think the one that together we built a suspension rule. That’s a rule that players and tournaments built.

We sat in Madrid at our year-end championships last November, Maria was in the room, Serena was in the room, Marion Bartoli was in the room. Together they said, Okay, if we’re going to have all these reforms, this change, we understand that we need a suspension rule. Together we created ones that if they commit to the Rogers Cup and they cannot play, they will be suspended.

How they can be relieved of their suspension, this is where we worked together with the players and tournaments, is that if you’re injured, okay. The only person who can say you’re injured is you. You’ve got to make that decision. If you cannot play, you’re going to get a zero pointer, lose all that bonus pool, and you’re going to have to go to the market. Go that week or you have to agree to come at some period of time over the next 51 weeks. If you do not, then you will be suspended and you’ll have a double fine.

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