I did not watch a single minute of the Laver Cup this year. That isn’t particularly unusual. Despite consuming an arguably unhealthy amount of tennis, I have never watched more than a few minutes of the Laver Cup during any of its nine editions.
I am not especially interested in exhibitions or made-for-television events, even when substantial financial incentives ensure that the players take the competition seriously. I value accomplishments far more when they can be used as bullet points on a Hall of Fame résumé. I don’t think that anybody is getting into the International Tennis Hall of Fame because of an exceptional Laver Cup performance.
Until I ran across a news article that was included in last Monday’s curated news capsules, I have always assumed the Laver Cup was undeniably financially successful. Everything about the event projects commercial strength. The black court looks high-end, and the sponsors are from premium brands. The tickets are exorbitantly expensive, and the production value is high. Most importantly, the biggest names in men’s tennis enthusiastically participate.
As it turns out, looking rich and making money are not necessarily the same thing. Tumaini Carayol’s article in The Guardian this week examined the Laver Cup’s finances. The numbers are considerably less impressive than I would have anticipated. The 2023 event in Vancouver produced an operating loss of £1.8 million. Berlin appeared to essentially break even in 2024, but that figure included £1.5 million in non-tournament revenue. Without that injection of cash, the event itself would have lost another £1.5 million.
There have certainly been successes. Boston produced an operating profit of £4.9 million in 2021, while London made £4.1 million the following year. The financial results for last year’s event in San Francisco are not yet available. Still, nine editions into an event that looks and feels like one of the wealthiest properties in tennis, the business case appears considerably less settled than I would have guessed.
The event was Roger Federer’s attempt to create a tennis equivalent of golf’s Ryder Cup. In that event, six European players compete against six players from the rest of the world, producing the unusual spectacle of athletes who spend the majority of their professional lives as individual competitors suddenly functioning as teammates. The Ryder Cup is excellent television. I don’t watch a lot of golf, but the Ryder Cup is compelling.
The Guardian article opens with a wonderful example from the inaugural event in 2017. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal found themselves simultaneously coaching Alexander Zverev, with Federer rather forcefully correcting the young German’s negative body language while Nadal reinforced the message. Similar moments have occurred throughout the event’s history. This year, Carlos Alcaraz has effectively become another coach on the Team Europe bench, offering Casper Ruud detailed tactical suggestions during his match.
We rarely get to see this side of professional tennis. The Laver Cup exposes how elite players think about the sport while also allowing us to see relationships and personalities that conventional tournaments don’t. Rivals coach each other and become doubles partners. Players who normally operate alone suddenly become emotionally invested in somebody else’s match.
I understand why fans and the players themselves enjoy it. That doesn’t change my fundamental problem with the premise. Golf needed the Ryder Cup. Tennis already had a prestigious team event before the Laver Cup was conceived.
The Davis Cup predates the Laver Cup by 117 years. Tennis didn’t need to manufacture an international team competition because it already had one of the oldest and most historically significant team competitions in sports. The teams in Davis Cup also represent something beyond the event itself. Players compete for their countries, creating identities and rivalries that tournament organizers don’t need to invent.
Team Europe versus Team World is considerably more arbitrary. The Laver Cup’s own description says it was inspired by the Ryder Cup and aspires to deliver an unmatched team tennis competition. Organizers have long envisioned it eventually occupying a place in tennis comparable to the Ryder Cup’s position in golf.
That ambition is where I become uncomfortable. If the Laver Cup existed in isolation, I probably would not care. There is plenty of room in tennis for entertainment. Not every match needs ranking points or historical significance. Fans can enjoy watching great players compete in a unique format without pretending that the result will alter how anyone evaluates their careers.
The problem is that the Laver Cup does not exist in isolation. Professional tennis players have finite time, and the sport causes significant physical wear and tear. The Laver Cup occupies calendar space and asks many of the same elite players coveted by Davis Cup to participate in another team competition. Given a choice, some players understandably gravitate toward the event offering appearance money, premium accommodations, star treatment, and an opportunity to spend a glamorous weekend alongside their peers.
That choice has consequences. Every player who chooses Laver Cup instead of representing his country is one fewer elite player available to Davis Cup. At the margins, the two events compete for players, attention, broadcasters, and sponsors.
This is particularly frustrating because many of the characteristics celebrated as innovations of the Laver Cup have existed in Davis Cup for generations. Players sitting together on the sidelines. Captains providing tactical advice. Unusual doubles combinations. Partisan crowds. Teammates becoming emotionally invested in each other’s matches. Individual athletes temporarily becoming part of something larger than themselves.
The Laver Cup did not invent team tennis. It just packaged the top stars extremely well for television.
What I would hate to see is the commercially constructed product eventually supplant the historical institution it borrowed from. That possibility becomes even more difficult for me to accept in light of the financial numbers. If the Laver Cup were an overwhelming commercial success, there would at least be an obvious market argument for its growing prominence. Instead, the event appears to have discovered that selling an expensive, star-dependent spectacle in a different city every year is not automatically profitable.
Perhaps that explains the return to London only four years after the enormously successful 2022 edition at that venue. Some markets apparently work much better than others.
None of this means that the Laver Cup is failing. The event has survived for nine editions, attracted many of the greatest players in the world, and has produced memorable moments. The players appear to care about winning once they arrive, even if the results themselves are unlikely to keep any of them awake years later.
The Laver Cup may simply occupy an unusual gray area in professional tennis. It has limited competitive consequence but considerable entertainment value. It presents the sport exceptionally well while struggling to demonstrate consistent profitability. It was modeled after one of golf’s great traditions while competing with a tennis tradition that already existed.
Its results will not affect how I evaluate a player’s career, and Team Europe versus Team World gives me no particular reason to care who wins. I understand the attraction considerably better than I once did, and I readily concede that the Laver Cup presents professional tennis in ways conventional tournaments generally do not.
I still remain unconvinced that tennis ever needed it.
Golf needed the Ryder Cup. Tennis already had the Davis Cup. If the Laver Cup continues to grow at the expense of that century-old competition, tennis could eventually find itself trading genuine history for a better television product.
The recently disclosed financial results raise an uncomfortable possibility. It might not even be a more economically successful one.
