ATP Media, an arm of the men’s professional tennis tour, generated revenue of over $200 million in 2023, with the return of the Shanghai Masters event among the contributing factors to this increase.
The tour’s media revenue grew 12% from $180.4 million to $202.9 million in the year to December 31.
ATP Media is responsible for the production and distribution of broadcast coverage of ATP Tour events, plus associated betting, and data rights.
The Shanghai event is one of nine Masters 1000 events on the ATP calendar and returned for the first time since 2019 last year, helping to increase ATP Media’s broadcast and betting revenues.
ATP Media’s revenue uplift was also attributed to the expansion of four Masters Series tournaments to 12-day events and higher income from data rights.
ATP Media represented 38 ATP Tour 250 tournaments in 2023, up from 32 the previous year, following the aggregation of ATP 250s rights.
From January 1, 2023, the ATP Tour 500s and 250s events became ‘B-Shareholders’ in ATP Media Holdings Limited.
As a result, ATP Media no longer represents their media rights on a commission basis, but instead on the same basis that it represents the centralized rights to the ATP Masters 1000 tournaments and ATP Finals, with organizers contributing their rights in return for a licence fee.
The change sees revenue and costs now reported as gross. For 2022, revenues have been adjusted to $180.4 million, cost of sales to $157.1 million, administrative costs to $16.9 million, and operating profit to $4.5 million.
The bulk of ATP Media’s revenues comes from live broadcast rights sales, coupled with subscriptions to the Tennis TV OTT platform. That service grew its subscriber revenues by 13% in 2023.
ATP Media’s cost of sales was 13% higher, which includes the impact of calendar changes and an increase in costs due to unfavorable exchange rate movements. The company also returned to pre-Covid spending levels in 2023, while administrative costs were 38% higher.
Profit before tax was $6 million, up from $4.5 million in 2022.
Revenue from Tennis Data Innovations, a joint venture between the ATP and ATP Media, was 63% higher than the previous year, meanwhile, including the Shanghai Masters impact and an uplift in data rights.
In June 2023, the organization launched ATP Media Studios, a dedicated remote production hub in London.
During the year, ATP Media also began to invest in its original programming and non-live content department, with a view to “growing younger audiences for the game and enabling commercialization of content by tournaments and the ATP Tour.”
In 2023, ATP Media took all European broadcast rights to tender, resulting in several major contract renewals and several new broadcast partnerships that came into effect on January 1, 2024.
During the process, ATP Media worked closely with WTA Ventures, the commercial arm of the women’s WTA Tour, in several regions.
Key rights deals struck in 2023 include a multi-territory agreement with pay-TV giant Sky, and renewals with Warner Bros. Discovery (France), TV 2 (Denmark), and Cosmote (Greece).
During the reporting period, ATP Media also agreed a long-term production partnership with UK-based live broadcast facilities provider Gravity Media to deliver global coverage of its tournaments, while sports data intelligence and digital services provider Sportradar was named as the tour’s global gambling data and streaming partner for the six years.
