The skilled tennis excursions and two different defendants collectively filed a movement in federal court docket in New York to dismiss the class-action antitrust lawsuit filed by the Skilled Tennis Gamers’ Affiliation, a bunch co-founded by Novak Djokovic.
The PTPA sued the WTA girls’s tour, the ATP males’s tour, the Worldwide Tennis Federation (ITF) and the Worldwide Tennis Integrity Company (ITIA), which oversees anti-doping and anti-corruption efforts within the sport, in March, calling them a “cartel.”
The gamers are searching for a better share of revenues and in addition raised varied different complaints about how tennis is structured, together with limits on prize cash and a scarcity of competitors from rival excursions or tournaments.
The PTPA was based by 24-time Grand Slam champion Djokovic and Vasek Pospisil with the intention of representing gamers who’re impartial contractors in a largely particular person sport.
The group’s govt director, Ahmad Nassar, repeatedly has mentioned it’s not a full-fledged union, doesn’t have members and doesn’t gather dues — all of that are pointed to in certainly one of Tuesday’s motions as the reason why the PTPA doesn’t have standing as a plaintiff within the case. That movement got here from all 4 defendants.
A separate movement, filed solely by the WTA, says that the male plaintiffs — 2022 Wimbledon runner-up Nick Kyrgios, Reilly Opelka and Tennys Sandgren had been amongst these named — shouldn’t be suing the ladies’s tour, and in addition argues that the feminine plaintiffs — who embody Sorana Cirstea and Varvara Gracheva — must be compelled to go to binding arbitration as a substitute of pursuing the court docket case.
A spokesman for the PTPA didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.