ATP Tour Finals will stay in Italy until 2030, Turin and Milan in contention to host after 2025

The ATP Tour Finals will remain in Italy until 2030, ATP chairman Andrea Gaudenzi confirmed following Jannik Sinner’s victory over Taylor Fritz Sunday night. According to people with knowledge of the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private talks, tournament sponsor Nitto has been pushing for a move from Turin to Milan which has become something of an open secret, sparking a battle in the Italian press between officials from the rival regions. For now, the ATP has declined to nominate a city for 2026 onwards; Turin will host the event in 2025.

“I know what is going to happen, I’m not going to tell you,” Alexander Zverev, a member of the ATP Player Council, said at his post-match news conference Wednesday night.

Keeping the tournament in Italy allows the ATP to maintain a degree of stability while still capitalizing on the rising popularity of tennis in Italy, thanks in part to the success of Jannik Sinner, the two-time Grand Slam champion and men’s world No. 1. The Italian Ministry of Sport will commit $100million (£79million) over those years, with Piedmont president Alberto Cirio giving Turin credit for the scale of the investment in a news conference alongside Italian Tennis Federation (FIT) president Angelo Binaghi Sunday afternoon.

Binaghi thanked Gaudenzi and the ATP for their trust on court, explaining in Italian that the event would become bigger and bigger over the next five years. “It is an incredible moment for Italian tennis. We have the best player in the world, a fantastic guy. We are the best team in the world in the Davis Cup,” he said.

“It’s important that we have this tournament in a tennis-loving country,” Gaudenzi had told a small group of reporters including The Athletic earlier in the event.

Prize money in the new deal is expected to increase, but neither Gaudenzi nor another person briefed on the discussions would specify by how much. Prize money increased more than 50 percent from the last contract to the current one, to more than $15 million from less than $10 million previously. If the eventual winner goes undefeated at this year’s event they will win over $4.8m (£3.78m): finalist Sinner took it home after his 6-4, 6-4 win against Fritz.

Any move to Milan from 2026 would spell the end of a successful five-year run for the tournament in one of northern Italy’s commercial capitals. Milan is one of the global hubs for fashion and the center of banking and finance in Italy.

The deal kills any chance that the men’s season-ending tournament — for which the top eight players of the year qualify — will follow the WTA Tour Finals to Saudi Arabia in the near future. The WTA and Saudi Tennis Federation (STF) signed a three-year deal for that event in April, with the first edition held last week. There was equal prize money on offer, with a slightly varied structure meaning that an undefeated champion would have won over $5m (£3.9m). Coco Gauff, who won the title but four of her five matches, ended up with $4.8m.

The removal of the Tour Finals from Saudi Arabia’s roster of potential tournament investments means that its ultimate desire, to host an ATP Masters 1,000 (a tournament one rung below a Grand Slam) may grow stronger. The country’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has been negotiating with tour officials for more than a year, but after their proposals roiled the tennis world around 12 months ago, Saudi Arabia’s tennis ambitions, at least in the men’s game, have stalled.

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The two sides continue to go back and forth about the size and timing of the event, which would happen in January or February, as well as the proposed tournament’s projected revenues and the amount of investment that would be required. Officials involved with those talks say any event would not begin before the 2028 season. It remains unclear whether women would be involved in that event to create a combined 1,000-level tournament, in the vein of events like Indian Wells, the Italian Open in Rome, and the Madrid Open. Gaudenzi said earlier this week that money from a new tournament could be used to buy back licenses from some smaller events and help shorten the season.

Milan lies just under 100 miles from Turin and already thousands of fans each day ride the train between the two cities to attend the tournament. Milan would be expected to hold the tournament in Santa Giulia Arena, a 16,000-seat stadium being built for the 2026 Winter Olympics, which will take place in Milan and Cortina.

The tournament is currently held in Turin’s Alpina Arena, which seats 12,350. It moved to the city in 2021 after a 12-year run in London.

(Nicolo Campo / LightRocket via Getty Images)