Interview with Bounces on ATP antitrust trial

Ben Rothenberg peppered me with questions about the ATP and PTPA's day in court

So something a little different this week. My friend, tennis writer Ben Rothenberg interviewed me for his Substack, Bounces, about my report for Front Office Sports https://frontofficesports.com/tennis-player-testifies-atp-threatened-him-for-supporting-lawsuit/ from the first hearing in the ATP antitrust case. If you are a tennis fan, Bounces is a great read, and it was great talking at length about the tennis industry’s three hours in federal court last week. Below is Ben’s post from Bounces. I have included about a third of it, the rest is for subscribers.

Less than a month after filing its big lawsuit against four tennis governing bodies, the Professional Tennis Players Association (PTPA) already found itself in a Lower Manhattan courtroom with the ATP Tour last Friday.

As the PTPA was seeking an immediate gag order against the ATP Tour for its actions during the Miami Open to rally support amongst its players against the lawsuit, this first skirmish came months earlier than expected. But it was already a big-ticket moment, with player-plaintiffs Vasek Pospisil and Reilly Opelka both testifying.

Remarkably, only one reporter was present for this first three-and-a-half-hour battle in what could be a long war: Daniel Kaplan, a veteran sports business reporter who has covered the inner workings of tennis and other sports for decades.

I got to know Dan well during our time side-by-side in the trenches (wooden benches with no WiFi) during my most recent tennis courtroom experience: the 2018 Bouchard vs. USTA case. He’s an experienced, savvy sports business reporter—with his own Substack, which Bounces readers should certainly add to their subscriptions. Once I read his initial reporting on the hearing, I was eager to get more of Dan’s insights and observations on what happened in the courtroom.

As Bounces subscribers will read below the paywall, Dan and I spoke at length about many aspects of the hearing, including:

• What brought about an urgent court date this early;

• The player testimonies by Opelka and Pospisil, and how the ATP challenged them;

• The ATP’s attempts to undermine the PTPA’s credibility;

• How Novak Djokovic’s distancing himself from the lawsuit played in the hearing;

• The tenor of the courtroom and the track record of the opposing attorneys;

• Past sports law cases that could be precedents, including a lawsuit the Hamburg tournament filed against the ATP;

• And, perhaps most pivotally, how the track record of the judge gives Dan a strong feeling about which way she might lean in this case.

You’ll get a lot of insight, color, and flavor from this conversation about where the case stands at this point and where it is likely to go next, so I definitely think this is a piece making the jump for any readers who might still be on the fence about upgrading their subscriptions. Only about 11 percent of Bounces subscribers have a paid subscription, which means 89 percent of y’all are missing some great stuff, past, present, and future.

So if you can, many thanks for subscribing to Bounces! -Ben

Bounces is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts, read the full archives, smash through all paywall, avoid FOMO, and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

A Conversation With Daniel Kaplan

As always before longread pieces, a reminder that the Substack app does a great job reading articles aloud, if you’d like to turn this 4,000+-word read into a meaty podcast.

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Ben Rothenberg, Bounces — Let’s start here: what was the purpose of this court event? It came much sooner than I think any action was expected in this case.

Daniel Kaplan — It’s interesting, because this was a very early hearing for a case that had just been filed…

For readers who are not familiar with the court processes, it usually moves like molasses. And significant hearings—and this was three and a half hour hearing—significant hearings like that tend to take seven to eight months after filing. There’s doing briefs, there’s doing motions. The court, which is very busy, schedules it down the road.

This came, really, just a little more than a month after the case was filed. And the reason it was called so early was because the PTPA is asking the court to essentially gag the ATP from discussing the case with its members. The allegation is the ATP is twisting arms to get players not to support the lawsuit and the PTPA

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces — So it was almost like an emergency sort of hearing, an urgent thing.

Daniel Kaplan — Right. I mean, the PTPA’s point of view is that it’s urgent because, if the conduct is allowed to persist, it decimates their proposed class of players who they’re seeking to represent in this class action.

The judge took it under advisement. She asked the parties to file new briefs, which are due this Friday [today]. And she says she’d rule shortly after. And I have an opinion on which way she’ll rule.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces — OK, what’s that?